Compounding Unfair Advantages for Bad Banks

Today we read...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Treasury Department indicated Friday it expects taxpayers will lose billions less from the financial bailouts than earlier estimated. The problem is, its revised forecast assumes Treasury's shares of bailed-out companies are gaining value despite this week's plunge in stock prices.

Below the surface of this story is another. It's a story of conflicts of interest that could lead to further unfair preferential treatment of bad-actor banks at the cost of banks that played by the rules.

The US Treasury Department has a clear interest in promoting the stock price of the banks it bailed out. This creates pressures for Treasury to set policies and make decisions for the benefit of these bad-actor banks, improving their balance sheets, regardless of merit. A bank could be a crappy business, and Treasury would still want it's stock price to increase.

Given that these bad-actor banks compete in some ways with other banks that didn't have to be bailed out, being propped up in this way by Treasury has the effect of creating an unfair advantage. This unfair advantage merely adds to the more blatant unfair advantage of the original bailout; huge banks that could have been allowed to fail and naturally break up were, instead, propped up or forced into being bought by other banks resulting in fewer, larger banks.

This situation cries out for anti-trust action by the Government; these huge banks need to be broken up. This is justified for technical reasons of avoiding avoiding too-big-to-fail crises in the future and creating a more fair competitive market for good banks. It's also justified on basic principles of fairness.

Sources:

Associated Press, Lower bailout estimate assumes higher stock prices, May 22, 2010.

Rep. Jane Harman: CIA Agent?

Congresswoman Jane Harman (D CA), Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, strikes me as anything but intelligent. Sorry I can't give you historic factoids, but upon hearing a recent report from FAIR's Counter Spin program, I found myself thinking, again, that she sounds like a CIA agent, witting or unwitting.

Harman chimed in on the recent assassination of Iranian physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi saying on MSNBC:

I think the logic here is that the Iranian government, or some group associated with them, took this guy out. I mean, it's a sign of desperation to start killing your own nuclear scientists.

Never mind the reporting I've read that Mohammadi did abstract physics research rather than applied nuclear engineering associated with power or weapons. Just sounds like Harman is parroting the group-think chatter here... and possibly picking up and broadcasting CIA talking points.

I'm not saying I believe this, but it fits a pattern.

FAIR* goes on to recount Harman's compromised background. Congressional Quarterly reported that

Harman was caught on a Bush administration wiretap promising an Israeli agent that she would try to help pro-Israel lobbyists, who had been accused of espionage. In return, the lobbyist ogranization, APAC, would push Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, projected to be House Speaker at the time, to make Harman Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

Congressional Quarterly's continued to report:

The reason Harman was not prosecuted for what would seem to be illegal influence peddling was that Bush's Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, wanted to use Harman to stop the New York Times from publishing details about the Bush Administration's warrantless wire tapping Program. Harman did indeed contact the New York Times to try to get them to kill the piece.

Jane Harman is so deeply compromised that it's no surprise my thoughts turned to her being a CIA agent upon hearing her statements about the Mohammadi assassination.

Sources:

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Counter Spin, January 15, 2010.

CNN's Cohen Biased on Single-Payer Healthcare

... along with Congress, Obama, and the rest of the establishment. (There's that E-word).

Thanks to Fair and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) and the Godless Liberal Homo blog, we have something to do.

CONTACT:
Elizabeth Cohen, CNN
404-827-1500
elizabeth.cohen@turner.com

Let her know that you'd like her to include the single-payer proposal, Medicare for All, as an option in the healthcare reform debate.

Why does she need to be reminded of this? Here are a couple snippets:

Cohen recently argued:

"Fifteen years ago you sometimes heard--actually you heard quite a bit--people saying: "Let's have a single-payer system like in Canada. The government is going to be the health insurer for everybody."

FAIR reports:

Cohen is right that there were many people in favor of single-payer 15 years ago; as a FAIR Extra! article from that era (7-8/93) pointed out, New York Times polling since 1990 had "consistently found majorities--ranging from 54 percent to 66 percent--in favor of tax-financed national health insurance." The numbers today? A New York Times/CBS poll (1/11-15/09) found 59 percent in favor of government-provided national health insurance.

But CNN's Elizabeth Cohen tried to argue that we have a better chance of health care reform now than in the Clinton era, by claiming

Fifteen years ago you sometimes heard--actually you heard quite a bit--people saying: "Let's have a single-payer system like in Canada. The government is going to be the health insurer for everybody." You don't hear that as much as you used to. So more people are on the same page more than they once were.

Her logic would make sense if her underlying presumption was correct, but as FAIR points out, It's just not true that more people have rejected a single-payer system. In fact, by the end of this debate, I'm willing to bet public opinion will be even more supportive of Medicare for All than they are now, because more will be educated about it... no thanks to the corporate, advertiser controlled media.

Psssst... Do Something

The Fair Trial of George Bush

In an essay, "Why Bush and Cheney Should Get A Fair Trial," Nightprowlkitty at Docudharma poses the question, Why should they get a fair trial? Much of the piece presents variations on the theme:

One reason is because so many have not gotten a fair trial, both here in the USA and abroad.

Underlying that theme is a message that the legitimacy of the United States system of Justice depends on it.

If we do not hold those in power accountable for their crimes, then who will ever believe the average American has any chance of a fair trial? Why should our faith in our justice system continue?

This is a very powerful rationale for letting blind justice take its natural course, rather than having the natural flow dammed by the establishment. But there is another powerful reason.

Impunity of the elite from justice is a certain path to social breakdown. We know the crimes committed by George Bush and others. In the words of chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

The crimes are not in question. The only question is whether society will allow Bush to get away with these crimes. If it does, the rule-of-law will become illegitimate in the eyes of many more people and the thread of civil order will unravel further.

Put another way, do the elites want orderly Justice or disorderly Justice? I saw the dot-com bubble burst coming, I saw the Bush wars coming, I saw the housing bubble-burst coming, I see inflation coming and I see social breakdown coming if Bush and his associates are not prosecuted.

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives