Where is the US economy headed?

No, it didn't, because the Corporate law that you so love to defend (when we're talking about banks or oil companies or defense contractors) protects the executives of corporations from being held personally responsible in almost every possible case. Do you think Dick Cheney should have gone on trial, personally, for all the crap that Halliburton did while he ran it? - and remember, we're talking about some serious ****, here...

Cycloptichorn

There you go with your favorite whipping boys, Halliburton and Cheney.
Yes, I am in favor of people personally standing trial if it can be demonstrated that they personally committed crimes. For example, if a person embezzles money from a company, they should be prosecuted. I doubt seriously however that Cheney did anything criminal. I think Cheney gave up his holdings in Halliburton when he became VP. In contrast, I do think that criminality may have occurred in Fannie Mae. We really do not know, do we, until more facts are brought out into the open. And to dispute what you said about companies shielding employees, what about Enron, didn't one or more of those go to jail?

Based on what? Without looking it up, tell me exactly why you think this. And why you think Halliburton was any different.



You're picking the one example out of the hundreds of corporate corruption cases in the last 20 years that actually did end up with convictions. And in this case, there were leaked tapes which had direct admissions by these guys and their subordinates that they had committed crimes. I doubt you will find anything similar in either the Fannie or Halliburton cases.

Enron was notable, because it is so completely rare that this actually HAPPENS.

By the way:



Completely and totally wrong.

Cycloptichorn

http://www.factcheck.org/kerry_ad_falsely_accuses_cheney_on_halliburton.html
"Kerry Ad Falsely Accuses Cheney on Halliburton
September 30, 2004
Contrary to this ad's message, Cheney doesn't gain financially from the contracts given to the company he once headed.
Summary
A Kerry ad implies Cheney has a financial interest in Halliburton and is profiting from the company's contracts in Iraq. The fact is, Cheney doesn't gain a penny from Halliburton's contracts, and almost certainly won't lose even if Halliburton goes bankrupt.
The ad claims Cheney got $2 million from Halliburton "as vice president," which is false. Actually, nearly $1.6 million of that was paid before Cheney took office. More importantly, all of it was earned before he was a candidate, when he was the company's chief executive."

Ridiculous, Okie. Did you even read the article?

When Cheney DOES exercise his stock options, and donates them to charity, he will write those donations directly off on his taxes. To pretend that he won't profit from these millions of dollars of charitable donations is inaccurate.

Not only that, you stated:



This is totally false. He did no such thing - he merely pledged to donate them to charity when he exercises them.

Let us circle back around to my question, regarding why you think Raines was personally corrupt (but Cheney wasn't):



Cycloptichorn

ILL = Invidious Leftist Liberals; GRL = Greedy Rightist Liberals
ILL seek to secure their right to steal wealth others earn.

GRL seek to secure their right to retain wealth they earn.

ILL think legitimizing the stealing of wealth others earn will lead to equalization of wealth and the elimination of hateful behavior. Actually neither will be achieved. Those in the government minority performing the redistribution of wealth will be the ones growing wealthier and more powerful, while their victims, the majority, as well as their beneficiaries will gradually grow poorer and less powerful.

GRL think that laws that violate the Constitution must be repealed in order to rescue and renew America. Laws that violate the Constitution serve only to increase the power of government over the power of the people.

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams

“Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” -- John Adams

“I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.” – Samuel Adams

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men should possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” -- Samuel Adams

“The powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.” – James Madison

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” -- Benjamin Franklin

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.” -- Benjamin Franklin

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” -- George Washington

Remember, the USA is not a democracy
A majority of the citizens governed by the federal government cannot dictate to the minority, or a minority of the citizens governed by the federal government cannot dictate to the majority. The USA is a representative, constitutional republic in which the powers of the federal government to govern us citizens and other residents are strictly limited.

Do you then support Barney Frank ? He joined Maxine in that effort to stop any reform of Fannie & Freddy, and chaired those rather grotesque House hearings in which he and Franklin Raines engages in a disguisting but mutually ass-covering colloquy about how nothing they did, ranging from stopping the reform or even restraint of Fannie & Freddy to expanding their purchase & securitization programs for mortgages, to enforcing the CRA could possibly have contributed anything to the financial bubble in property markets that has caused so much havoc.

We have discussed these issues before. I recognize that there were other contributing factors involved, such as the CDS market which you like to cite. However, the fact remains that it was the mass purchase and securitization of mortgages issued by others (often with little scrutiny) done by Fannie and Freddy that diverted so much capital to the expanding property bubble - a root cause.

I think Frank was wrong, deeply wrong, on this issue - though he's not wrong on a lot of others, and he certainly isn't as odious as Waters is.

I think that he and others viewed the attack on Fannie and Freddie as proxies for political attacks on Democrats, and went into freak-out protect mode. It wasn't helpful at the time and in retrospect it was clearly wrong on their part. However, accusations that F/F were the root cause or even the main contributor to the problem with CDS and MBS', which was the narrative being forwarded by the Republicans on the committee at that time, were equally false.

Cycloptichorn

First of all, was Cheney ever guilty of "cooking the books" at Halliburton? I doubt it, and that is why I view Raines as more personally corrupt than Cheney. Furthermore, Fannie is a government backed operation, which is far different than Halliburton. Taxpayers have been on the hook for hundreds of billions, thats billions with a b, cyclops. And I don't think the fallout is at all over with the bailouts at Fannie and Freddie.

One of the complaints about Halliburton is all of the government contracts they have had, but what liberals conveniently ignore is that Democrats have given contracts to Halliburton as well, and one of the big reasons is that Halliburton provides services that nobody else either does or does as well. I think we should be complimenting Halliburton for the expertise that they have provided us.

Nonsense. If there were no securitized, low quality mortgages, there would have been no CDSs , period.

Hundreds of Billions, if not Trillions of dollars of subprime mortgages had already been sold and securitized by the banks BEFORE F/F got into the business of buying sub-prime mortgages in 2004. That's the part you don't seem to realize: Fannie and Freddie were actually panicking in 2003 because they weren't making the returns they needed to stay competitive with Wall Street, who was making money hand over fist on this.

You have your time-line on this completely wrong, George. I'm not championing F/F, they made poor decisions and the entire structure of their existence should be examined. But it's fallacious to say that they were the CAUSE of the problem - totally wrong. They bought into the existing problem and exacerbated it.

Cycloptichorn

I have a couple of notes I need to use up before they get stale.
John Boehner (R-OH) is the incoming majority leader in January. He will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday and will say that he intends to introduce a new spending cut bill every week for the 1st 3-months of the new Congress.
Week #1: Reduce all Congressional budgets by 5%. That would cover funding for members' staff, for leadership and for the various committees. The savings would be about $25-30M a year.

I'd take him more seriously if he reduced his paycheck by any amount.

Cycloptichorn

Note #2: The Commuter Tax Credit
Hidden in the contentious tax cut extension debate is this amusing issue. I am vastly simplifying the details. Scheduled to expire but likely to be extended is this tax break. If you drive to work, or if you take mass-transit, you can have your employer sign-up for a program to help you with the cost of commuting (gas & parking) via your own car or via public transport tickets up to $230/month.
The amount users sign up for is still paid as part of the paycheck BUT it is exempt from income tax and employee contributions to SS and Medicare. And the employer doesn't have to match its portion of the employee contributions.
The savings to employees and employers cost the U.S. about $150M a year.
More in a bit...

Some dent that will make. It'll probably cost twice as much to do it.

Now, that is interesting. In a desire to lower oil imports and reduce air pollution, we are subsidizing people who drive to work.

Awesome!

President Obama's interview with NPR was broadcast today. The only thing that I heard that was new was his suggestion that there be discussions of a revising of the whole tax code undertaken in 2011.
Perhaps he is proposing this as cover for extending the "temporary" Bush era tax cuts.
The last major overhaul of taxes was in 1986, after several years of debate. That happened, by the way, when Congress was split between Repubs and Dems.
I am cynical about lawmakers being willing to be serious about getting into substantive debate when we are into an almost continuous election cycle.
There are so many sacred cows or golden geese in the tax code.

For some reason, I think we have to be missing part of the picture here. This whole thing as explained by rjb just does not make sense.

Yup. I can't see the House Republicans letting Obama get a victory before 2012 on any issue, no matter how good the deal is for them.

Cycloptichorn

Okie: I googled in "Tax Breaks For Commuters" and came up with various articles. I readily concede that this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I invite you to do some research and report back to us on what you find.
I was using that more as a setup piece on revising the tax code.