Wall Street’s best friend?

OK, opposing the financial bill itself is wrong-headed: the economy is in the shitter because of casino style economics. It is IMPERATIVE to reform/regulate the financial industry to protect investors and the economy. 


But opposing the version of the bill as it stands today? I have no problem with that. It doesn't do enough. Like the health care reform bill, it gives more advantages to the banks and financial institutions than it does in the effort to protect investors. Also, Dodd's bill does NOTHING to prevent another financial crash happening in the future--for the same reasons this current one occurred. What's the point if it doesn't limit the types of bogus financial products that caused the crash to begin with? Jesus, are these people this stupid or this corrupt?

~~o)X(o~~

The Tea Party movement, Wall Street’s best friend
SAHIL KAPUR

Did anybody catch this? Given how much news coverage the tea partyers receive it’s a bit surprising no one seemed to notice that the Tea Party Nation is bashing the financial reform bill:

Yet Tea Party Nation has made it clear that its base of activists will not support what they call a permanent bailout. They allege that the bill funds government takeovers of banks.

“While the liberals were able to take over 1/6 of the economy with health care, they are now trying to take over the remaining 5/6 with ‘financial reform’ legislation,” the tea party e-mail continues.

(Random question: Do tea partyers think there’s nothing more to the economy than health care and financial services?)

It’s easy to produce cute sound bites like the above quote but it’s impossible to imagine the acrobatic leaps of logic necessary to equate placing mild rules on banks (to prevent another financial disaster) with taking over 5/6 of the economy — then again, if you can keep a straight face and call the health care bill a “government takeover,” sky’s the limit, I guess.

I’m not being coy here but isn’t this the movement that claims to be incensed over the Wall Street bailouts? Do they expect a repeat of 2008 never to occur if the government does nothing — or, perhaps, continues to deregulate the industry?

Maybe they think the bill could be better. But they’re not offering constructive solutions. They’re not rallying against Wall Street. Their beat, as with pretty much anything President Obama and Democrats try to do, is obstruction, plan and simple.

The contradiction is rather glaring, and seems to play right into the notion that this isn’t an independent or issue-based movement, that it doesn’t really stand for anything other than electoral defeat for Democrats — and to the evident logical conclusion, electoral victory for Republicans. Is this even a matter of opinion anymore? What more needs to happen before this becomes obvious?

This has to be Wall Street’s dream-come-true: a group folks that have virtually (for now, at least) seized control of the Republican Party, duped the media into portraying themselves as a populist movement, but in reality supporting all the policies that benefit the wealthiest few — in the case of financial reform, at the expense of the masses.

Also, the “permanent bailout” is a Frank Luntz distortion that’s been thoroughly debunked.