Rep. John Adler, a New Jersey Democrat who supports the amendment, also chimed in that the White House and Treasury Department back the repeal.
That prompted Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D., Pa.), who said a permanent exemption would be a "bad day for the American investor," to ask Adler to identify the administration folks with whom he had talked.
Adler said he discussed the matter three times with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
This is sad. According to Huffpost article that means more than half of publicly traded companies will be exempt from Sarbanes Oxley.
don't mean to start any inter-generational battles and withdrawal my idea.
What is needed a stronger social safety net and a better jobs strategy. We have generations on both ends basically screwed - younger people with no jobs (18.5% unemployment as of July 2009) and older people with jobs who need them to survive.
I know such a plan would help people very close to me. One person who recently lost her job at the age of 62 and probably won't be able to find another one who is getting COBRA that will run out shortly.
in order to "free up jobs for young people" is really ridiculous frankly. I know it came "from the left" and does anyone realize what they speak? We already have institutionalized age discrimination in this country. If anything we should be rehiring the older people and how it used to be, younger people were trained, mentored by the older people. We had in house training as well as external training, paid for by the corporations.
Fine to lower Medicare to age 60, but frankly if they want to "free up jobs for younger people" they should plain kick out all of the guest workers and illegals in the country first and foremost. That's about 1.5M plus 10+ million jobs.
The reality is older workers have been wiped out and they need jobs. It's really bad for older workers for many of them had their entire retirement funds wiped out, many foreclosed upon, plus facing massive age discrimination.
They are not just working for health insurance, they are working to pay their rent, eat, pay bills. I forget the percentages but an astounding number of workers, over 50 have zero, count 'em, zero retirement funds.
Acting like older workers should just go "retire" is ridiculous. Retire on what?
It's also a complete waste. Older workers have life experience in a lot of career areas. That's an entire workforce who knows what they are doing, who could kick start the U.S. economy if enabled...because they have lifetime skills.
Sorry but those are the statistics and this concept that somehow the U.S. should commit even more atrocities against the U.S. worker, i.e. even more age discrimination drives me up the wall.
First and foremost we should be taking care of our citizens, not flooding the labor market with guest workers and illegal workers if you want to look at just supply/demand snapshots of the labor market right at this point.
Seriously. Illegals cost CA alone $10.5B a year. They repress wages too and increase the massive underground economy. We have guest workers undercutting U.S. wages, displacing U.S. workers and enabling technology transfer out of the U.S. on top of it. The H-1B Visa is called the outsourcing Visa for this reason. And they are using it in jobs one would not expect, things like insurance back office work, even teachers, they are hiring teachers on H-1B instead of U.S. workers. Part of this is a bureaucratic nightmare education has become. Teaching requirements are a ridiculous bunch of busy work certifications....so in the Philippines for example, they do all of the "certifications" there and then import cheap teachers....instead of bypassing or funding all of these certifications and using displaced U.S. workers to teach.
Granted I am not sure how much this would cost but I think it is worth looking at considering the number of people who are working now (assuming employed) just for health insurance. This could free up jobs for younger people. Just a thought.
“It is but a matter of time until China and the IMF announce much of the same,” said Dennis Gartman, an economist and the editor of the Gartman Letter in Suffolk, Virginia.
A series of analysts have gold being $1125 by the end of December and are also saying these nations are buying it because Gold is decoupling from the dollar.
I wonder how tied it is to single mothers. The problem is work discriminates against single mothers and there is no strongly subsidized state help with child care either.
It's pretty outrageous that having a child is a sure fire ticket to poverty.
Food stamps have also been proven not to cover food costs enough. So, they buy the "cheap stuff" which is usually empty calories, devoid of nutrition.
Thanks for reminding us, he did promote outsourcing and still is.
Also, Obama admin announced they are not going to do anything about the tax incentives to offshore outsource your job.
As far as projects goes, these are bridges, levies, water treatment plants, running power lines to areas which have wind, for wind farms...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a ton of projects that need work, without funding and enough personnel, so the basic structure to start on these major projects, which are prone for disaster and need immediate attention. A program could be created building on current organization, maybe adding the military to organize it or the national guard, but the Society of Civil Engineers has multiple reports on crumbling, dangerous bridges too.
So, this isn't so much high speed rail (but would be nice in congested areas), but just addressing the major infrastructure projects that are in dire need. There are multiple reports many levies and bridges are plain dangerous, an accident waiting to happen.
That said, EP is a place to shout out and gain public support for sane, smart policy. I personally think the economic blogs are the reason we have discord on financial reform and it isn't a pure steam roll. So, it's up to us to point to some good policies.
A true, honest-to-God national infrastructure-for-the-future project would be miraculous --- which is way I doubt it would ever take place, given present and past administrations (please remember, Secretary Locke was the guy who, when governor of Washington, offshored state jobs at 49 out of the total number of state agencies (maybe 53, or something like that).
First, those corporations and American-based transnationals who signed on to that last letter to kill the "Buy American" clause in the Bretton Woods Committee letter to Reid and Pelosi (dated Feb. 11, 2009), should have all their Offshore Finance Center accounts raided, and all those hundreds of billions, quite possibly trillions, of tax dollars justifiably recovered by the rightful US government! This was promised by President Obama, it is damn well time he began making good on all his campaign promises (including the one regarding changing that tax legislation giving tax breaks to corporations for laying off American workers and offshoring their jobs).
Next, if America can put a man on the moon, it is damn well time it finally built a high-speed bullet train, comparable to what they have in France and Japan. Second, besides the oft-cited point at the Economic Populist about a national industrial policy, likewise we have the need for a national transportation policy: mag-lev or bullet trains with long overdue, upgraded rail lines connecting all major cities, and perhaps minor ones, as well as city-wide monorail systems, etc., etc.
All these phony talking points about the need for better and better education is nonsensical --- without the essential demand for those better educated people. (As in real jobs!)
Innovation should not consist of better ways of scrounging food from dumpsters! Although this appears to be what our corrupt congress believes.
Also, all anti-propaganda laws must be enforced against those thousands upon thousands of phony foundations, "think tanks" (just read the feed from Brookings Institution about their so-called economic "myths" -- the only myth is any worth those fraudulent clowns at Brookings get paid to believe they possess!).
Sorry, off-topic, but had to vent....Oh yeah, one last item: regarding those proposed super-sized wind energy farms --- the two best locations for windiness would be Capitol Hill (Washington, D.C.) and Wall Street --- you won't find any more wind expelled anywhere else in this country!
Robert, you expect too much. Obama just wants things to return to how they were before this mess. Thus they are macro-tinkering, "albeit at a lower level." The place has been looted. The Obama folks just want to put all the furniture back in place and hope the burglars did not find all the credit cards and silverware. No need to call the cops, we'll just pay the mob for "protection."
FDR knew how to rally the American peoploe and ask them to unite in common struggle. He believed in what he was doing. Somehow, I do not get the feeling Obama has that conviction. I voted for him, but then I voted for Carter too.
Frank T.
We need a FDR and instead we've got .....corporate lobbyists getting whatever they want.
One thing about the Great Depression is it created a society where people cared about their neighbors. They had a sense of community, of society, of being an American, of patriotism.
Instead we have corporate lobbyists just running amok, all the way to the White House and we cannot even get basic financial reform.
I think FDR had reforms passed in the 1st 100 days and considering the gravity of this financial implosion, this is purely disgusting what is going on with the lack of financial reforms.
We are talking about publicly traded companies when it comes to Sarbanes Oxley and by becoming a publicly traded company there are certain costs that must be incurred to do so - particularly compliance with securities regulation. Well, it turns out that Emanuel may be "quietly" pushing Maloney's Amendment:
The White House is quietly working to undercut a key post-Enron reform, significantly weakening protection for everyday investors and threatening the administration's image as a champion for financial regulatory reform.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been telling Democratic members of the House Financial Services Committee that he supports amending the Investor Protection Act of 2009 -- a bill designed to beef up protection for investors -- in order to exempt small businesses from a requirement in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that mandates audits of internal controls. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 in the wake of accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom that rocked investors and damaged confidence in the markets.
Check this quote out from the article:
"Democrats like to talk a lot about how the deregulatory Bush Administration caused the financial crisis. I'm frankly having a hard time understanding why some of those same Democrats are lending their support to legislation that would weaken protections against accounting fraud even more than Christopher Cox's SEC was willing to do," said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, in a reference to the much-maligned former SEC chairman under the previous administration. "And [the Obama administration] wonder[s] why people question their credibility as financial reformers?"
These are NOT "mom and pop" shops as the article says.
The chance to secure a seat on the "V" train left about a year ago.
That was when our government had a choice before it: Bail out the people, or bail out the very gangsters and banksters who caused the mess. Our government chose the banksters over the people, and we will pay for this folly for two generations.
When the crisis hit, there was only one workable solution - a complete society-wide revaluation of assets and bad debt write-off. The economy was a ponzi scheme were the last ones in were left holding the bag. And the last in were millions of mortgage, refinance loans and credit card balance holders. And instead of making them whole, our government chose to make the top of the pyramid whole.
All the major banks and casino houses needed to collapse, trillions in debt write-off needed to happen, and trillions needed to be poured into the social safety net to catch those that would fall due to the resulting depression. But then we could have cleared the books and moved on.
But instead Bernanke got out a giant air hose and inflated a new bubble to hide the popping of the last one. And now, as far as the eye can see, we'll have only Fed printing and government schemes ahead to hide the implosion.
That anyone can see a "V" shaped recovery, when we're at the heels of a global implosion to make the Great Depression look like a tea party, is amazing to me.
And who is paying for this carry trade? When it goes sour, we will find out -- as Hank Paulson's ghost shows up to warn us it's bailout or else. We have been bankrolling a huge carry trade for the banksters via the Federal Reserve. Banks (and other privileged elites) hoard funds and collect the vig without breaking a sweat. The American middle class can't get a deal that sweet -- these guys are "connected."
Where the hell is the outrage?
Frank T.
The sad thing about financial education is that there are many self-serving pundits writing books, articles, and blog posts, and teaching courses at local high schools and community colleges (not to mention putting on seminars at restaurants and hotel convention centers). Employers are even bringing in investment advisors to teach their workers how to diversify their 401(k) accounts. Some of these gurus are better than others, but I'm sure a lot of people try to educate themselves in good faith to make better investment decisions, only to lose their shirts in every financial downturn that comes along.
It appears to me that the masses are taught certain investment strategies just to make it easier to take them to the cleaners. I fear that even if we all started making the "right" decisions in lockstep with each other, we'd still just be prey for the bigger predators.
I think before anyone can take out any loan, credit card, there should be a national financial literacy test.
Seriously. We have them to drive cars, yet people who cannot read, cannot add two numbers together, do not understand the difference between 74% interest and 17% are allowed to be sold pretty much anything.
In high school, I don't recall even a basic class to teach people how to open a checking account or even write a check, never mind understand loan terms.
I'm sure the ACLU would be allow over that one as somehow discriminatory, but hell, is a driving license and test discriminatory?
particularly financial/economic education (an issue I care deeply about). I don't know how we compare to other countries but from the stats that I have seen we are pretty financially illiterate. And financial illiteracy, I believe, played a role in the financial crisis.
The problem as I see it is how can people make informed decisions if they don't understand the information they are provided. People have no way of knowing whether a source is credible or not. And that is what we are seeing today. It's a problem - just look at how many people follow ever word of certain radio talking heads who are multi-millionaires and who give a rat's ass about their listeners.
IMO, participatory democracy only works if we have an electorate that is educated, well informed and participates. It's in the best interest of certain powers that these 3 things remain absent.
In a follow-up story from yesterday - Huffpost confirms that it was the Obama Administration and more specifically Rahm Emanuel who blessed the gutting of Sarbanes Oxley:
This is sad. According to Huffpost article that means more than half of publicly traded companies will be exempt from Sarbanes Oxley.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
don't mean to start any inter-generational battles and withdrawal my idea.
What is needed a stronger social safety net and a better jobs strategy. We have generations on both ends basically screwed - younger people with no jobs (18.5% unemployment as of July 2009) and older people with jobs who need them to survive.
I know such a plan would help people very close to me. One person who recently lost her job at the age of 62 and probably won't be able to find another one who is getting COBRA that will run out shortly.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
in order to "free up jobs for young people" is really ridiculous frankly. I know it came "from the left" and does anyone realize what they speak? We already have institutionalized age discrimination in this country. If anything we should be rehiring the older people and how it used to be, younger people were trained, mentored by the older people. We had in house training as well as external training, paid for by the corporations.
Fine to lower Medicare to age 60, but frankly if they want to "free up jobs for younger people" they should plain kick out all of the guest workers and illegals in the country first and foremost. That's about 1.5M plus 10+ million jobs.
The reality is older workers have been wiped out and they need jobs. It's really bad for older workers for many of them had their entire retirement funds wiped out, many foreclosed upon, plus facing massive age discrimination.
They are not just working for health insurance, they are working to pay their rent, eat, pay bills. I forget the percentages but an astounding number of workers, over 50 have zero, count 'em, zero retirement funds.
Acting like older workers should just go "retire" is ridiculous. Retire on what?
It's also a complete waste. Older workers have life experience in a lot of career areas. That's an entire workforce who knows what they are doing, who could kick start the U.S. economy if enabled...because they have lifetime skills.
Sorry but those are the statistics and this concept that somehow the U.S. should commit even more atrocities against the U.S. worker, i.e. even more age discrimination drives me up the wall.
First and foremost we should be taking care of our citizens, not flooding the labor market with guest workers and illegal workers if you want to look at just supply/demand snapshots of the labor market right at this point.
Seriously. Illegals cost CA alone $10.5B a year. They repress wages too and increase the massive underground economy. We have guest workers undercutting U.S. wages, displacing U.S. workers and enabling technology transfer out of the U.S. on top of it. The H-1B Visa is called the outsourcing Visa for this reason. And they are using it in jobs one would not expect, things like insurance back office work, even teachers, they are hiring teachers on H-1B instead of U.S. workers. Part of this is a bureaucratic nightmare education has become. Teaching requirements are a ridiculous bunch of busy work certifications....so in the Philippines for example, they do all of the "certifications" there and then import cheap teachers....instead of bypassing or funding all of these certifications and using displaced U.S. workers to teach.
Granted I am not sure how much this would cost but I think it is worth looking at considering the number of people who are working now (assuming employed) just for health insurance. This could free up jobs for younger people. Just a thought.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I'm glad you posted this, I almost did. I think we need a few more "market" posts which imply bigger picture moves.
This is one. Bloomberg:
A series of analysts have gold being $1125 by the end of December and are also saying these nations are buying it because Gold is decoupling from the dollar.
I wonder how tied it is to single mothers. The problem is work discriminates against single mothers and there is no strongly subsidized state help with child care either.
It's pretty outrageous that having a child is a sure fire ticket to poverty.
Food stamps have also been proven not to cover food costs enough. So, they buy the "cheap stuff" which is usually empty calories, devoid of nutrition.
Thanks for reminding us, he did promote outsourcing and still is.
Also, Obama admin announced they are not going to do anything about the tax incentives to offshore outsource your job.
As far as projects goes, these are bridges, levies, water treatment plants, running power lines to areas which have wind, for wind farms...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a ton of projects that need work, without funding and enough personnel, so the basic structure to start on these major projects, which are prone for disaster and need immediate attention. A program could be created building on current organization, maybe adding the military to organize it or the national guard, but the Society of Civil Engineers has multiple reports on crumbling, dangerous bridges too.
So, this isn't so much high speed rail (but would be nice in congested areas), but just addressing the major infrastructure projects that are in dire need. There are multiple reports many levies and bridges are plain dangerous, an accident waiting to happen.
That said, EP is a place to shout out and gain public support for sane, smart policy. I personally think the economic blogs are the reason we have discord on financial reform and it isn't a pure steam roll. So, it's up to us to point to some good policies.
A true, honest-to-God national infrastructure-for-the-future project would be miraculous --- which is way I doubt it would ever take place, given present and past administrations (please remember, Secretary Locke was the guy who, when governor of Washington, offshored state jobs at 49 out of the total number of state agencies (maybe 53, or something like that).
First, those corporations and American-based transnationals who signed on to that last letter to kill the "Buy American" clause in the Bretton Woods Committee letter to Reid and Pelosi (dated Feb. 11, 2009), should have all their Offshore Finance Center accounts raided, and all those hundreds of billions, quite possibly trillions, of tax dollars justifiably recovered by the rightful US government! This was promised by President Obama, it is damn well time he began making good on all his campaign promises (including the one regarding changing that tax legislation giving tax breaks to corporations for laying off American workers and offshoring their jobs).
Next, if America can put a man on the moon, it is damn well time it finally built a high-speed bullet train, comparable to what they have in France and Japan. Second, besides the oft-cited point at the Economic Populist about a national industrial policy, likewise we have the need for a national transportation policy: mag-lev or bullet trains with long overdue, upgraded rail lines connecting all major cities, and perhaps minor ones, as well as city-wide monorail systems, etc., etc.
All these phony talking points about the need for better and better education is nonsensical --- without the essential demand for those better educated people. (As in real jobs!)
Innovation should not consist of better ways of scrounging food from dumpsters! Although this appears to be what our corrupt congress believes.
Also, all anti-propaganda laws must be enforced against those thousands upon thousands of phony foundations, "think tanks" (just read the feed from Brookings Institution about their so-called economic "myths" -- the only myth is any worth those fraudulent clowns at Brookings get paid to believe they possess!).
Sorry, off-topic, but had to vent....Oh yeah, one last item: regarding those proposed super-sized wind energy farms --- the two best locations for windiness would be Capitol Hill (Washington, D.C.) and Wall Street --- you won't find any more wind expelled anywhere else in this country!
Robert, you expect too much. Obama just wants things to return to how they were before this mess. Thus they are macro-tinkering, "albeit at a lower level." The place has been looted. The Obama folks just want to put all the furniture back in place and hope the burglars did not find all the credit cards and silverware. No need to call the cops, we'll just pay the mob for "protection."
FDR knew how to rally the American peoploe and ask them to unite in common struggle. He believed in what he was doing. Somehow, I do not get the feeling Obama has that conviction. I voted for him, but then I voted for Carter too.
Frank T.
Thank you for the link to the hearing video and transcript.
I tuned in late and missed especially Trumka's statement.
This is a great blog!
This would be a good time to start one and actually Rep. Rosa DeLauro has introduced legislation.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
here.
We need a FDR and instead we've got .....corporate lobbyists getting whatever they want.
One thing about the Great Depression is it created a society where people cared about their neighbors. They had a sense of community, of society, of being an American, of patriotism.
Instead we have corporate lobbyists just running amok, all the way to the White House and we cannot even get basic financial reform.
I think FDR had reforms passed in the 1st 100 days and considering the gravity of this financial implosion, this is purely disgusting what is going on with the lack of financial reforms.
We are talking about publicly traded companies when it comes to Sarbanes Oxley and by becoming a publicly traded company there are certain costs that must be incurred to do so - particularly compliance with securities regulation. Well, it turns out that Emanuel may be "quietly" pushing Maloney's Amendment:
Check this quote out from the article:
These are NOT "mom and pop" shops as the article says.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
The chance to secure a seat on the "V" train left about a year ago.
That was when our government had a choice before it: Bail out the people, or bail out the very gangsters and banksters who caused the mess. Our government chose the banksters over the people, and we will pay for this folly for two generations.
When the crisis hit, there was only one workable solution - a complete society-wide revaluation of assets and bad debt write-off. The economy was a ponzi scheme were the last ones in were left holding the bag. And the last in were millions of mortgage, refinance loans and credit card balance holders. And instead of making them whole, our government chose to make the top of the pyramid whole.
All the major banks and casino houses needed to collapse, trillions in debt write-off needed to happen, and trillions needed to be poured into the social safety net to catch those that would fall due to the resulting depression. But then we could have cleared the books and moved on.
But instead Bernanke got out a giant air hose and inflated a new bubble to hide the popping of the last one. And now, as far as the eye can see, we'll have only Fed printing and government schemes ahead to hide the implosion.
That anyone can see a "V" shaped recovery, when we're at the heels of a global implosion to make the Great Depression look like a tea party, is amazing to me.
And who is paying for this carry trade? When it goes sour, we will find out -- as Hank Paulson's ghost shows up to warn us it's bailout or else. We have been bankrolling a huge carry trade for the banksters via the Federal Reserve. Banks (and other privileged elites) hoard funds and collect the vig without breaking a sweat. The American middle class can't get a deal that sweet -- these guys are "connected."
Where the hell is the outrage?
Frank T.
The sad thing about financial education is that there are many self-serving pundits writing books, articles, and blog posts, and teaching courses at local high schools and community colleges (not to mention putting on seminars at restaurants and hotel convention centers). Employers are even bringing in investment advisors to teach their workers how to diversify their 401(k) accounts. Some of these gurus are better than others, but I'm sure a lot of people try to educate themselves in good faith to make better investment decisions, only to lose their shirts in every financial downturn that comes along.
It appears to me that the masses are taught certain investment strategies just to make it easier to take them to the cleaners. I fear that even if we all started making the "right" decisions in lockstep with each other, we'd still just be prey for the bigger predators.
decrease the pool of potential customers that they can take advantage of.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I think before anyone can take out any loan, credit card, there should be a national financial literacy test.
Seriously. We have them to drive cars, yet people who cannot read, cannot add two numbers together, do not understand the difference between 74% interest and 17% are allowed to be sold pretty much anything.
In high school, I don't recall even a basic class to teach people how to open a checking account or even write a check, never mind understand loan terms.
I'm sure the ACLU would be allow over that one as somehow discriminatory, but hell, is a driving license and test discriminatory?
Seriously.
particularly financial/economic education (an issue I care deeply about). I don't know how we compare to other countries but from the stats that I have seen we are pretty financially illiterate. And financial illiteracy, I believe, played a role in the financial crisis.
The problem as I see it is how can people make informed decisions if they don't understand the information they are provided. People have no way of knowing whether a source is credible or not. And that is what we are seeing today. It's a problem - just look at how many people follow ever word of certain radio talking heads who are multi-millionaires and who give a rat's ass about their listeners.
IMO, participatory democracy only works if we have an electorate that is educated, well informed and participates. It's in the best interest of certain powers that these 3 things remain absent.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
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