Edited by Robin Silberman
Finance: The American Revolution
Published in La Tribune
(France) on 14 December 2009
by Pierre-Angel Gay (link to original)
(France) on 14 December 2009
by Pierre-Angel Gay (link to original)
Translated from
by Livia Calvet.
Edited by .
It is, of course, only a first step. But in Europe we can hardly measure how revolutionary a step is for the United States. On Friday, December 11, not only did the House of Representatives pass the most important financial reform bill since the 1930s - 1,279 pages, no less - but it included the creation of a protection agency for consumers. An agency in charge of regulating and observing financial products aimed at private consumers, from mortgages to credit cards, in order to better counter “predatory practices.”
From Brussels to Paris, this step could seem obvious. But on the banks of the Potomac in Washington, it constitutes a huge innovation, fought against as such by the Wall Street lobby and its partisans in Congress. Born overseas, the crisis shed light on the failures of U.S. regulatory practices. Financial creativity was so widespread that entire sections of the system escaped any form of control. This was true of those who handled “sub-primes," those mortgage loans offered to households incapable of paying them back, for example. When there was some form of control, it was too often overseen by many different parties; sometimes the responsibility of each individual federal state, as in the insurance industry, for example, where no one foresaw AIG’s collapse.
Creating a federal agency in charge of the financial protection of consumers would avoid both these obstacles by taking hold of the problem from the other end. It would mean aligning with Canadian and European standards. “Socialist” standards, in other words, for the most extreme apostles of entrepreneurial freedom. This is the reason Barack Obama was forced to reach out to common sense on Saturday to justify his reform. It is the reason why the battle the president is about to embark upon with the Senate will be one of the hardest of his mandate.
From Brussels to Paris, this step could seem obvious. But on the banks of the Potomac in Washington, it constitutes a huge innovation, fought against as such by the Wall Street lobby and its partisans in Congress. Born overseas, the crisis shed light on the failures of U.S. regulatory practices. Financial creativity was so widespread that entire sections of the system escaped any form of control. This was true of those who handled “sub-primes," those mortgage loans offered to households incapable of paying them back, for example. When there was some form of control, it was too often overseen by many different parties; sometimes the responsibility of each individual federal state, as in the insurance industry, for example, where no one foresaw AIG’s collapse.
Creating a federal agency in charge of the financial protection of consumers would avoid both these obstacles by taking hold of the problem from the other end. It would mean aligning with Canadian and European standards. “Socialist” standards, in other words, for the most extreme apostles of entrepreneurial freedom. This is the reason Barack Obama was forced to reach out to common sense on Saturday to justify his reform. It is the reason why the battle the president is about to embark upon with the Senate will be one of the hardest of his mandate.
OMG…I hope you don’t buy the hooey from the liberals…it was government intervention, forcing financial institutions to give loans to uncreditworthy people that caused the problem. All of the “creative” financing was in defense of the unmanageable liability that these institutions were forced to assume.
The costs of the Sarbannes Oxley reporting regulations have cost our nation as much as the bailout and stimulus…these requirements were instituted to prevent future failures of large organizations. They failed completely and utterly to prevent anything, and are a chronic and immoral drain our our economy.
The real revolution is coming, it is returning our government back to the confines of the Constitution and stopping all of this illegal, imoral and asinine government interference with our free markets.
A little research will reveal that every single bubble that burst, every single company that failed was the result of government interference.
And, We the People know it. Within the next 10 years we will roll back 100 years worth of socialist intrusion into and destruction of our liberty, prosperity and dignity.
Best wishes,
Gail S