Around the Web: Tweak Show

Rather than providing a terrifying wakeup call to reshape our financial system, the economic meltdown turned out to be a boon to bank lobbyists.

The fight for financial reform looks like it will be a long war.

Who won the first battle? The too-big-to-fail bankers, who spared no expense in protecting their interests. Now they’re stronger than ever, and the job of regulating them has largely been turned over to the same regulators who failed to protect the country from the recent debacle.

House and Senate conferees are still haggling over the final details. In the latest “compromise” to emerge, Rep. Barney Frank has given up fighting for an independent consumer financial protection agency, agreeing with the Senate proposal to house consumer protection within the Federal Reserve.

It hasn’t helped that the man who was supposed to lead the charge  – President Obama – ­ has largely been missing in action. An independent consumer financial agency was once a linchpin of President Obama’s financial reform package. But it’s gone the way of other provisions that the big banks opposed. The president also once threatened to veto reform if it didn’t contain strong derivatives regulation, now the administration is actually working to undermine it.

One of the most articulate advocates of a stronger overhaul of the financial system isn’t waiting around to see the final bill to declare a verdict. Baseline Scenario’s Simon Johnson declares the reform effort a failure. Rather than joining with a handful of congressman and senators fighting for a more robust overhaul, Johnson concludes that the White House “punted, repeatedly, and elected instead for a veneer of superficial tweaking.”

Now the focus of financial industry lobbying will shift to the regulators, who will have the task of writing the new rules the administration and Congress balked at providing. The conference committee is televising its proceedings. It’s not a pretty picture, as when Texas Republican congressman Jeb Hensarling argued to gut some controls on bankers’ compensation out of concern that the federal government would be setting bank tellers’ pay.

If you have a strong stomach, you can view the remaining sessions here. The Democrats want the negotiations wrapped up by July 4.

Consumer Protection, Fed Style

One of the big unsettled issues for the congressional conference committee considering financial reform is whether to create an independent financial consumer protection agency.

That’s what the House bill does. The argument for an independent agency is that consumers need a strong advocate in the financial marketplace.

The Senate decided that an independent consumer financial watchdog wasn’t needed, and that the consumer financial protector should live in, of all places, the Federal Reserve. After all, the Fed already has responsibilities to “implement major laws concerning consumer credit.” We all know how well that worked out.

The problem is that the Fed has functioned as a protector of the big banks, never more so than since the big bank bailout and in the battle over financial reform.

Despite promises for greater transparency, the Fed has repeatedly resisted attempts to get it to disclose all the favors it’s done for financial institutions since the bailout. If the Fed had put up half the fight against bank secrecy that it’s waged on behalf of bank secrets, consumers would never have been subjected to all those lousy subprime loans.

It is telling that no actual consumers or consumer organizations actually think that housing consumer protection inside the Fed is a good idea. Who does? The big banks and the Fed.

For those who still need convincing that a Fed-housed consumer protection agency is a bad idea, the Fed has provided a more recent example of what it means by consumer protection.

Last month it unveiled a database that’s supposed to help people choose the most appropriate credit card.

The database might be useful to professional researchers but provides little that would be of use to ordinary consumers. It presents the credit card statements by company but provides no other search functions, such as comparing credit cards by interest rates or fees.

Some of the presentation suggests that the information was dumped onto the Fed’s website without much thought. Bill Allison, who is editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organization that digitizes government data and creates online tools to make it accessible to readers, said the following:

“I don't think there's anything wrong with posting it, but this is obviously not data you can search,” Allison told Bailout Sleuth.

He also pointed out that some of the agreements themselves aren't particularly informative. He cited the entry for Barclays Bank Delaware, which notes that the bank may assess fees for late payments and returned checks. “The current amounts of such Account Fees are stated in the Supplement,” the agreement reads.

But that supplement is not contained in the Fed's database. The Fed promises to go back and refine its database. But if they’re not devoting the resources to get this right now, with their ability to protect consumers under the microscope, do you really expect they’ll do better later?

An independent consumer protector is not simply some technicality to be bargained away. We’ve learned from the bubble and its aftermath that consumers need all the help they can get. Contact your congressperson and tell them you’re still paying attention to the reform fight. Check out your congressperson and see if they’re on the conference committee. If they are, your voice is especially important. While you’re at it, contact the president and remind him we won’t settle for any more watering down of financial reform.

Around the Web: Typos and Tired Arguments

Did a typo or a technical glitch cause “a moment of uncontrolled selling” aggravating an already skittish stock market into a full-blown plunge? The old gray lady diplomatically labels it “an errant trade.”  But CNBC calls it a typo.

Meanwhile the fight over financial reform goes on. If some of it sounds hauntingly familiar, that’s because…it is.

Unearthing old arguments against corporate reforms of the past, columnist Michael Hiltzik finds opponents trotted out the same lame doomsday scenarios 75 years ago they’re offering today.

In 1933, writes Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times, the American Bankers Association urged members to “fight…to the last ditch” an “unsound, unscientific, unjust and dangerous” proposal Congress was considering.

What kind of dangerous radical thing could those congressional crazies have been up to?

Federal deposit insurance.

Just like financial reforms of the 1930s, most corporate reforms, Hiltzik reminds us, almost always turn out to be positive for their industries.

At Baseline Scenario, James Kwak does a good job dismantling the arguments against auditing the Fed, the proposal which appears to have been the subject of a Senate compromise Thursday that would allow a substantial audit to go forward.

The Obama administration has been fighting the proposed audit arguing that it will “politicize” the Fed and that the ordinary flawed mortals who inhabit Congress don’t have the intellectual chops to oversee the Fed’s monetary titans. “The idea that monetary policy is too technical for Congress to understand, and therefore should be done in secret, I don’t buy,” Kwak writes. “So is, say, climate policy. That’s a complex scientific topic, of crucial importance to the future of our nation (and the human race), that is clearly beyond the ability of Congress to understand and discuss responsibly. But we don’t exempt the EPA from Congressional oversight.”

One Reporter's Fight With the Fed

I didn’t know Mark Pittman, a reporter at Bloomberg News. We emailed a few times about the landmark lawsuit he instigated challenging Federal Reserve secrecy. I do know that Pittman is a genuine hero in a story which has very few.

He died too young last year, at 52. From what I gather, Pittman combined rumpled style, intellectual firepower and fierce persistence. The fight he waged to get the Fed to open its books serves as a lasting legacy and a strong reminder that one savvy, dogged person can make a real difference.

Earlier this month, Pittman’s employer, Bloomberg News Service, won yet another round in its fight with the Fed.

Around the Web: Will the Dodd Abide?

The fight for financial reform enters a new stage this week when Sen. Chris Dodd launches his latest version of his proposal. The New York Times highlights the senator’s weak nods in the direction of granting shareholders more power: giving them “advisory” votes on executive pay and the ability to nominate board members.

Dodd’s earlier proposal was considered stronger than the House reform bill, which was strongly supported by consumer advocates and opposed by bankers and the Obama administration. Dodd is a long-time ally of financial and insurance industries who have backed him over the years. But those close ties were undermining him politically after the financial crisis, so he was attempting to forge the appropriate image of a tough politician. Then Dodd dropped out of his tough reelection bid and he began to back off from some of his positions, like support for a strong and independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency. His effort to negotiate a bipartisan bill broke down and now some are reporting that Dodd has returned to some of the tough positions he had advocated. Here’s Calculated Risk’s breakdown of the proposal Dodd is about to unveil. Though it’s hard to imagine the push for financial reform going any slower, that’s what Republicans want, the Washington Post reports.

At the same time, the American Bankers Association meets in Washington this week, Business Week reports. They are ready to battle any attempt at greater consumer financial protections. They’ll defeat it outright if they can, and fight to water it down if they can’t kill it.

Obama Strikes Out

That didn’t take long.

Just a couple of days after the New York Times reported that Wall Street was unhappy with the return on its massive investment in the Democratic Party; President Obama softens his rhetoric on the big bankers. He told Business Week he didn’t “begrudge” bailed-out too big to fail bankers their bonuses, benignly comparing them to all the top baseball players who earn fat salaries yet don’t make it to the World Series.

“That’s part of the free-market system,” Obama opined.

Obama knows some of the bankers personally, he tells Business Week, and finds them “savvy businessmen.”

Before the bankers complained publicly about their lack of return on campaign contributions to Obama and the Democrats, the president had recently been trying out a tougher stance: suggesting “too big to fail” banks, their risky behavior and the fat bonuses that fuel it should be reined in.

President Obama has been consistently inconsistent in the fight over financial reform. He’ll make strong proposals one day (judicial cram-downs to help homeowners in foreclosure, for example) and then leave them to die without his support in Congress under withering assault by bank lobbyists. He’ll blast the bankers’ bonuses one day and cozy up to them the next. It was less than a month ago that the president labeled the bonuses “obscene” and pledged to tax them.

By contrast, the bankers have been relentless and shrewd in their fight to delay, confuse, stymie and water down attempts at reform. They have fought in the back rooms, in the media and the floors of Congress, using checkbooks and rhetoric.

The president is spot on, however, when he refers to the remaining big bankers as savvy. After they wrecked the economy, they didn’t waste the financial crisis. They’ve come back bigger and stronger than ever, with fewer competitors, with a firm grasp on a steady pipeline of cash from the federal treasury.

For a more clear-eyed view of the bankers, what they’ve been up to and what they have to do, we have Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor and congressionally appointed bailout monitor. “This generation of Wall Street CEOs could be the ones to forfeit America’s trust,” she wrote Monday in the Wall Street Journal [no link]. “When the history of the Great Recession is written, they can be singled out as the bonus babies who were so short-sighted that they put the economy at risk and contributed to the destruction of their own companies. Or they can acknowledge how Americans’ trust has been lost and take the first steps to earn it back.”

With his wish-washy approach, the president is in his own real danger of losing America’s trust as a champion of reform. Making lame comparisons between ruthless bank CEOS and clueless overpaid athletes doesn’t help the president’s credibility any.

Even the analysts on ESPN Sports Center know that.

Contact the president yourself and let him know what you think of the bailed-out bankers’ bonuses.

Obama's 'Hostage' Crisis

Tonight’s state of the union speech will be the least important of President Barack Obama's political career. No doubt it will be a dazzling performance, as the president pivots from pugilistic to professorial, from left to right. We know the president comes through with the rhetoric in the clutch. But the true test of his presidency is no longer what he says he will do or how he says it.

The test is whether Obama and his team wage a credible and effective fight for financial reform and economy recovery for Main Street, with the same vigor and urgency they threw into the Wall Street bailout. That will take more than a speech or even a series of speeches. It will take a real self-critical assessment of the president's strategy up til now and a tough, savvy and sustained political battle plan in the face of significant obstacles.

Both have been lacking in the president's approach so far. That’s the real pivot he needs to make now, and it has only partly to do with oratorical skills.

Obama’s credibility is suffering because he and his team keep suggesting that they have overseen a recovery that most people aren’t enjoying. They helped engineer a bailout that they say was absolutely necessary that helped the financial sector but left out the rest of us. Obama and his team don’t have credibility because they’re working Capitol Hill as hard as they can, not to create jobs for millions of out of work Americans, but to save the job of one of the few Americans who could have helped forestall both the financial crisis and the Wall Street –friendly bailout but didn’t, Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve.

Sen. Tom Harkin summed up what many people are feeling in reacting to comments from Tim Geithner, Obama’s treasury secretary who had warned that the stock market would tumble if Bernanke were not confirmed.

Geithner was just acting as a messenger boy for Wall Street, Harkin suggested. “How long will our economic policy be held hostage to Wall Street who threaten us that there’ll be total collapse if we don’t do everything they want?  Wall Street wants Bernanke,” Harkin said. “They’re sending all these signals there’ll be this total collapse if he’s not approved. You know, I’m tired of being held hostage by Wall Street.”

Wall Street doesn’t like key planks of the president’s financial reform plan, like the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and his recently announced plan to separate some of the largest bank’s risky business from its more traditional functions. The Senate’s banking committee chair, Christopher Dodd has signaled he’s ready to surrender on the consumer protection agency. Will the president announce tonight how he and his team plan to win that fight when congressional leaders are giving up? Or will the president treat the consumer protection agency and bank size as just details that should be left up to Congress, as he did in the battle over crucial aspects of health care reform?

A different kind of hostage crisis helped bring down a previous Democratic president. All Jimmy Carter had to grapple with were a bunch of Iranian revolutionaries holding 53 Americans in an embassy in Tehran. President Obama’s challenge is much tougher – 250 million people and our entire political process held hostage by some of the world’s wealthiest corporations and individuals. Carter’s hands were tied. Are Obama’s?

Finding Opportunity Among Democrats' Troubles

It’s the bankers, stupid!

President Obama, fresh from a stinging defeat in Massachusetts, came out swinging Thursday against the banks, promising a return to the spirit of Glass-Steagall.

The rhetoric was strong but the details were a little vague. It sounds like he’s suggesting limiting the size of banks as well as their ability to gamble with taxpayer backing. You can be sure the finance lobby will fight to block whatever new initiative the president offers.

Obama’s rhetoric is a year late but does provide opportunity nonetheless. The key thing is that Obama and the Democrats’ problems put real financial reform back on the table.

The debate over breaking up the banks has been fraught with fear-mongering and propaganda: supporters of the big banks argue business won’t have the resources to make big deals. Even smart people say dumb things in the debate, as Dean Baker points out. Broken-up banks will still be huge by any standard, just not quite so capable of taking the entire economy with them when they crash.

The obstacles to reform remain the same as they have been:

1.) a financial industry with unlimited resources for the fight

2.) politicians squeamish to take on their contributors in that industry, and only too willing to let bankers squiggle out of regulation in the legislative fine print

But Obama and other Democratic leaders have felt the sharp prick of the pitchforks in their rear ends.

They know that the public is aware of their clueless response to the financial crisis, shoveling billions to the titans of finance while failing to stem rising unemployment and foreclosures.

One step Obama didn’t take this morning was to scrap his entire financial team, the engineers of his too-comfy relationship to Wall Street and timid response to the crisis that has afflicted Main Street.

Except for 80-year-old Paul Volcker, the former Fed chief who has been born again as a reformer, they should all be fired.

On Thursday, Obama insisted he wasn’t afraid of a fight with the bankers. Certainly none of his team except Volcker have shown any inclination for doing or saying anything that would upset the bankers, let alone a brawl.

The current Fed chief, Ben Bernanke, is also feeling the chill from Massachusetts. Roll Call  is reporting that his confirmation for another term may be in peril, while The Hill reports that Senate Majority Harry Reid has “serious concerns” about how Bernanke, who has strong backing from Obama, plans to deal with the economy.

Now is the time to hold the president to his word. By all means contact Obama and applaud his tough speech Thursday. Contact your congressperson and senator and remind them that you’re paying attention to the reform battle and aren’t about to be fooled. Check out my open letters to Sens. Boxer and Feinstein for my bottom line on real reform.

We  need to tell the president and Congress that we won’t settle for phony reform that lacks transparency or a piddling tax on banks that represents just a fraction of their revenues. We need to tell them that we won’t settle for legislation alone – we need an antitrust crackdown to break the power of the big banks.

If you need ammunition for your phone calls and emails, here’s a study that shows how the financial industry has managed to thwart meaningful reform so far: it spent $344 million lobbying Congress – just in the first three quarters of 2009!

Meanwhile, Goldman-Sachs announced record profits last year, while it doled a mere $16.2 billion for bonuses.

Time will tell whether Obama is capable of delivering the fight he promised to back up his newfound populist punch. But let’s not give the president, or Congress, any excuse to back off or get distracted. Only relentless jabs from you and others will keep them from getting cozy again with their financial industry cronies.

The question right now is not whether Obama is up for the fight. The question is: can we turn our anger and frustration into a political force?

Mr. Angelides, Which Side Are You On?

While I was watching the hearings into the financial crisis last week, a haunting old song got into my head and wouldn’t leave.

It was “Which Side Are You On?” from the 1930s out of the coalfields of Harlan County, Kentucky.

Coal miners faced brutally harsh living and working conditions, under strict control by the coal barons who had complete power over the miners and their communities. The miners and their families waged a tough struggle to win recognition for their union and concessions from the bosses.

The lyrics describe how at a certain point in the fight, the population of Harlan County had to take sides.

They simply couldn’t remain neutral any more. They either had to stand with the miners and their families or with the coal barons and the thugs who enforced their rule.

I wanted to ask Angelides: which side are you on?

Are you on the side of the people who are suffering in the worst economic calamity since the Depression? Or on the side of the bankers  and the politicians and regulators who did nothing to halt the crisis and whose response has only made it worse?

Lots of people admire Angelides. He’s a former real estate developer who built a reputation as a reformer while California Treasurer, then ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006.

I found him an odd choice. Previous high-profile investigations have featured lawyers with not only great intellectual chops but who were skilled storytellers and fearless to boot.

Angelides is a bright guy who has some understanding of high finance, but without any of the characteristics that distinguished previous investigators. Far from being a courageous outsider, he’s a Democratic Party insider who has grubbed for political contributions.

He’s bright enough to get training and surround himself with people with those skills.

So why were the hearings so lacking in urgency to get to the bottom of the financial crisis, hold people accountable and offer material support for real reform?

Because Angelides doesn’t understand that at this point, there simply are no more neutrals. If you understand the public’s anger and the mishandling of the financial crisis, then you have an obligation to take a strong stance, and show you are on the side of really fixing the problems.

That’s what Sen. Christopher Dodd found out.

For years the Connecticut Democrat was a darling of the financial industry. Then came the crisis and the bailout. He tried to refashion himself as a reformer but he had no credibility with his constituents after having taken millions in campaign contributions from the financial sector over the years.

The voters in Connecticut weren’t buying the new image. They were threatening to throw him out, so Dodd retired. Since his announcement, he’s showed his true colors, doing his contributors’ bidding by dropping his push for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Unlike Dodd, Angelides is not running for office, at least not now. But he’s wearing the mantle of public protector, and the public is in no mood for phonies.

People don’t want an arbitrator, they want a fighter.

They also don’t have a burning need for another investigation. Several very thorough investigations have already been conducted, including one by the Consumer Education Foundation that you can find here.

Mr. Angelides, we know what happened. What we want to know is, what are you going to do about it? You can still set this commission straight. But you have to bring a sense of passion for the fight that has been missing so far. And you’ve got to know which side you’re on.