Aargh! How do we tell Congress to cram it?

Semi-related: John Ashcroft has an Op-Ed in today’s NYTimes that is nothing more than a marketing piece for his business of monitoring deferred prosecutions of corporate crime. Now he wants to go even further and use bailout funds as his payment to monitor deferred prosecutions. I think that means “too big to fail” has also become “too big to prosecute”. That plays directly into this story since we all know that massive mortgage fraud on the part of the lenders is how we got into this crisis, and no prosecutions or cramdowns will ever happen to restore a sense of justice.

and dumbass americans keep on doing NADA

If po peoples git there toe inna door it could conclude that communism is now our official language. Besides why can’t sick poor people raise billions for their own lobby? I have a feeling that poor sick people are represented by a poor sick person at a discount.

SAME list of players,committing the crimes reaping the profits from every angle cesspool on the Potomac

Good Morning Jane,

ke-rist! comparatively $42M is a lot of money – didn’t telco’s spend less than $5M totally for immunity ?

” He also indicated that between now and 2012, some 8 million homeowners may lose their houses in foreclosure.
Share spotlight Spotlight
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SO BE IT!
lazy ass americans need to million man woman and child march on the capitol and TAKE IT BACK

The irony of not having cram-downs is that the houses that the banks reposess will have even less value than current market values, because banks can’t ever sell repo’s at a decent price or get the paperwork to the new people in time for the sale to go through. They cut off their noses to spite their faces.

oh and good morning…philly im rehabing,somebody took a razor to her….is finally getting better

yup,such a waste on every end

Sounds like that little $42 million lobbying tab is a bargain when you think of all the folks the banks can now continue to bleed dry. But let’s not forget the huge costs of campaign contributions the banks have to absorb, & the special mortgage deals they had to cut Chris Dodd. The banks’ costs are so high now that once again they’ll have to raise the fees they charge me for letting them use my money.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

campaign contributions coming

the sewer is endless

Single payer advocates raising a ruckus on cspan. Baucus sez he feels their pain.

This money would feed a lot of hungry people, give medical care to many children, fill the potholes, pay for helping schools. Instead it will go into the pockets of politicians – plain, outright bribery. Nothing fancy – just crime.

They cut off their noses to spite their faces.

Sadly, it’s nothing new for US businesses to do that.

Think of the shortsightedness of selling SUV’s vs. advancing technology wrt alternative fuel vehicles.

How’d that work out for the (formerly) Big 3?

Yep. Think I saw that rate of return on some particular lobbying effort was 2,200%. As an economist, my Q is: why is this activity not a lot larger, given those outsized returns? And, Jane, your story is just the first in a long line of larger and larger lobbying efforts. The only thing that matters to our “elected” reps is $$$$$$$.

good. thanks for the heads up.

really, imo, the same story as the cramdowns. more anti consumer legislation for FIRE – in this case health care reform being designed for the insurance companies and not people.

Grassley sez health care reform is hard, it’s so hard.

Dya think? See my 15.

jane – a correction: FIRE stands for finance, insurance, banking and real estate. thanks.

Not short sighted at all. The car makers made a lot of money selling large vehicles. They would have been out of business a long time ago if they had tried to sell fuel efficient cars. Plenty of those were available and they commanded a small percent of the market.

Medical insurance shill promises to be good in the future.

Atrios has been all over the short sightedness here.

granny cbl used to call this bending over a dollar to pick up a dime

Bunning asks who’s gonna pay for all that additional coverage that insurance shill promises. Insurance shill sez the healthy, who will be brought into the new system, will pay.

no shit. tarp recipients return was even higher: $114 Million, $5.1 Billion

Baucus sez financing discussion comes later.

hahaha!

i haven’t been listening, thought it would be too depressing. but if you’re going to be around for a few minutes to help me laugh at the absurdity i’ll give it a try.

cspan fipped to House coverage, so I flipped to cspan3, and Bernanke.

I guess we have to rewrite that book on American Government again. I don’t remember reading the part where the corporatins get to buy their own legislation. Must be there somewhere in a footnote.

I assume you are a dumbass American as am I. What do you think can be done? Clearly the solution is not individual, but collective, action. How do we go about getting that together.

I might add when you consider the amounts involved, 42M is small change. That’s the striking thing about our representatives. They go into the bag for so little.

why is this activity not a lot larger, given those outsized returns?

Answer from another economist: strongly diminishing returns. Plus some of these firms are no doubt lobbying against each other, which is an arms-race scenario. So they would want to limit the expenditures. Of course there’s always the other possibility: they are making payments under the table.

yup. guess i’m safe. heard bernanke earlier (on cspan radio) pontificate about transparency and had to turn it off. if there was any transparency we’d know how much money is involved, where it is all going and how decisions are being made (who’s making them, etc).

I might add when you consider the amounts involved, 42M is small change. That’s the striking thing about our representatives. They go into the bag for so little.

I couldn’t agree with you more. But I look at it as the frog in the pot. Congress is raising their price little by little, as the voters get used to bigger and bigger numbers.

Looks like a bad business decision to me.

How much are they going to lose from people walking away from ridiculous mortgages as opposed to permitting renegotiated terms? Wait until the losses begin to appear late summer or early fall.

Oh, that’s right. They don’t care because Timmeh and Ben will bail them out.

What’s the evidence of diminishing returns?

I think the answer is in my 32.

Not short sighted at all. The car makers made a lot of money selling large vehicles. They would have been out of business a long time ago if they had tried to sell fuel efficient cars. Plenty of those were available and they commanded a small percent of the market.

Too many Americans are too fat and have dogs that are too big to fit into small cars. This has always been Detroit’s problem. They have the fat person market locked up, but fat people tend to be poor, and they’ve run out of money.

I had to turn Bernanke off. Medical “insurance” reform continues here.

thanks.

roberts says public insurance would cost less and we can’t have that.

would love to hear from ND firedogs (Prairie, ya out there ?) about Senator Byron Leslie Dorgan’s vote against cramdown.

he was about the last guy I expected to turn on his constituents. he’s not facing any real competition for re election (former rerp. gov trails him by more than 25% in current polling)

a month ago, he was taking bows for his vote against Gramm-Leach-Bliley

Roberts makes fun of single payer advocates in the audience. Then he sez that you can’t pay medical providers any less than they demand.

this is why they can’t have single payer advocates present – there would be someone who actually knows their shit to show up the idiots who haven’t this through (or who have and are in the pocket of the insurance companies).

Insurance shill agrees.

Hey! Same as the bankers!

You betcha. This is a really well choreographed panel. One would almost think they held a practice session.

All this shit is interchangeable. Just change the names plates and a few words and voila.

Did they use TARP funds to pay for lobbying? I feel like we paid for this lobbying campaign

Money is fungible (h/t Sarah Palin), so of course TARP went into the lobbying.

“fair rules” is up-is-down speak for making sure that private insurances companies are protected from competition from any public plan. i looked at hacker’s report and the ideas proposed for regulation make geithner’s various bankster bailouts look simple and transparent.

yikes.

p.s. i despise len nichols.

Why is it that only R senators are asking Qs?

June Taylor School of Banking Oversight

they’ve already provided cablenets with footage of the single payer advocate’s “disruption”

they look like so many aristocrats laughing in King Louis’ court

IMHO,

I think people like Dorgan, Feingold, Kennedy, and Dodd have to pick their spots to remain in Harry’s good graces. Feingold needs dairy supports to get re-elected in Wisconsin. Dodd in CT needs Wall Street’s money. I’m sure they all have their weak spots. The rest of the caucus won’t let any one or two members get too popular/populist without retribution.

I think McCain really pushed that tension to its fullest within the GOP to achieve his pseudo-maverick status.

Thanks Jane.

Barbara — June Taylor? Showing your age a bit, aren’t you, girl?

I was listening to someone on the radio that said the reason there are lobbyists is the fact that we have a constitutionally protected right to petition government officials for redress

this is easily solved by removing person hood from corporations, they never enjoyed a court decision having person hood and if the supreme court decides now they have it we can EASILY win a constitutional amendment

corporations should not be allowed to petition for law, they should not be allowed to buy our law, they should not enjoy the same “rights” as individuals, they SHOULD enjoy certain benefits and corporate umbrella protection but they should NOT enjoy the same rights as people enjoy

correction to my 5 above – AT&T alone spent $5M on immunity. combined expenditures (incl Verizon and Comcast) for the quarter leading up to vote was $13.6M

that, imo, is why it’s a mistake to look for politicians to lead the way. with the very same congress and executive we could be having hearings about single payer – if the politicians thought it was in their best interests to do so.

we can’t compete on a dollar for dollar basis, we have to compete by the number of people who are inspired to demand change.

Sorry to say you’ve got it backwards. Corps are the only persons now. Voters are disenfranchised almost entirely.

I did not see Citigroup in the chart. Although they stated that they were not against the mortgage cramdown feature in bankruptcy – they have been lobbying against any Credit Card Reform. And Citigroup is one of the worst banks to Abuse Consumers over Credit Card interest rates, high fees and the use of Universal Default, etc.

Opensecrets.org has Citigroup spending $1,350,000 so far in 2009, but they spent over $7.6 Million on Lobbying in 2008 – while they were tanking, and then begging for Bailout money.

Great chart – and thanks for writing about these financial issues and the corruption of elected reps who let their votes be bought.

perris,

they do not ‘enjoy the same rights as people enjoy’, they enjoy MORE RIGHTS than people do. And they reeeeeealy do enjoy them.

yup, but that does make my point

how doing ecahn?…haven’t spoken with you lately, all good?

an excellent point Boo -

industry shill saying good things about ma health reform model.

yikes.

Everything’s fine. I spent a lot of time planting trees, so wasn’t online very much.

How’re you doing?

as far as I am concerned the biggest problems facing our country was the removal of the fairness docrtine, private funding of elections allowing individuals the ability to buy our law and person hood for corporations

It’s clear from this panel on health insurance reform that mandated insurance is the key. That’ll bring in a whole lot of healthy people to pay for the medical care of the sick. Or so they aver.

now to talk to you much better, thanx for asking

excellent. doing your bit for carbon sequestration. *g*

this hearing is just too much stupidity for me today. “see” you later and thanks for the hearing company and moral support.

Hatch sez providing medical care to poor people is just too expensive.

This kinda makes me think that what might come out of health care reform is less medical care for everyone.

Hatch sez providing medical care to poor people is just too expensive.

“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”

Why not medicare for everyone? These plans sound more like healthcare for insurance companies.

Re the topic of this post, $42 million and 8 million foreclosures comes out to Congress selling out American families for about $5.25 per foreclosure. Of course, if you split that up among all Congressional members, it comes out to slightly less than a penny per foreclosure. So this is what Congress thinks of you. You losing your house is worth about 1 cent to them. Good for you to know, I think.

Not only do they get bailout money, but by quantifying their loss, they get tax rebates. They don’t care about killing neighborhoods and cities. They get it coming and going.

Public financing for political campaigns.

No meaningful change can happen until we get that. Period.

This is just a preview for Health care and everything else. Durbin’s not exactly right. It’s not that the bankers own our “reps”. It’s that all these special interests “rent” them, taking turns as the need arises.

Isn’t there another word for that?

Ugh.

When President Obama proposed yesterday axing tax breaks for offshore corporations that ship jobs overseas, many people never realized how ballsy that really was. Because the corporations that would be the hardest hit happen to be his biggest campaign contributors and I have some eye-popping statistics to prove it.

Basically, the president gladly took their millions through their PACs and gave them the finger 105 days later.

EGGGGGGGGGGS…..SALENT!!!!!!!!!

And too bad the GOP has succeeded in keeping Franken out of this discussion. Off-shore loopholes has been a favorite topic of his and he might really make a difference

Great research and great post. It’s truly remarkable how deeply invested the banks and financial sector is invested in Washington. What investment has such a great return?

An added point: everyone talks about public financing for campaigns, but few talk about expanding lobbyist disclosure laws. Over at the Sunlight Foundation blog we’ve been talking about new solutions for lobbyist disclosure and I’d hope that some people would like share their ideas. Here’s just some quick link-whoring, you read stuff here, here, here, here, and here.

Wow! It Looks like the bankers are getting great value for their money.
How about we get something like that kind of return (from the banks) on our money?

It would appear there was actually some interest in the bill and they had to work a lot of billable hours to pay off the right people or somehow convince them it was a bad idea to save working-class people’s homes, despite it being a wonderful idea to save rich people’s 2nd, 3rd and other homes.

The problem is there are a handful of individuals for whom it worked great. The fact anybody benefits hugely while others are losing everything means our system is broken broken broken.

We’re already paying twice to three times what we should. I’d say they’re getting enough and they should cover everybody in the country while cutting their costs.

Exactly how does a single-payer plan (for whatever size group of consumers) relate to how much you pay health care providers?

Adding more people brings in more money and makes the overall system MORE expensive. That doesn’t solve the problem. It makes things worse.

How do they propose getting the insurance companies to bring down the rates so the overall cost to the country is less?

Does Hatch not realize we’re paying for their care already? ER care at that.

It’s one of the reasons our overall system is so so expensive.