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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (37937)	10/29/2009 9:44:04 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Dodd's Card Trick A new price control to clean up after the previous one. OCTOBER 29, 2009. Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd has been hearing from constituents upset because banks have been raising the interest rates on their credit cards. This week Mr. Dodd decided to do something about it. He proposed a bill imposing an immediate freeze on those rates. "At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, jacked up rates can quickly create crushing debt," Mr. Dodd said in a statement. "People need to be responsible with their money, but they shouldn't be taken to the cleaners by outrageous rates." If customers are being taken to the cleaners, it is because lawmakers like Mr. Dodd sent them there. In May, Congress passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which bars rate increases without a 45-day notification. To reduce their risk under this law, banks are rushing to raise rates before it takes effect in February. Thus the Senator's latest political grandstand. In the unlikely event that Mr. Dodd's new legislation passes, banks would limit their risk in other ways, such as canceling cards or refusing to extend credit to marginal customers. The unavailability of credit can also be a burden on struggling families, not to mention having a depressive effect on the economy. We suppose Mr. Dodd could propose yet another bill, pre-emptively barring banks from tightening credit requirements. But maybe it would be more efficient to address all these problems at once by enacting comprehensive legislation to repeal the Law of Unintended Consequences. Almost any Member of Congress could support that—assuming, of course, that Mr. Dodd could convince them that it would work according to plan. online.wsj.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (37937)	1/7/2010 10:34:07 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Exit Stage Left 'Countrywide" Chris Dodd retires ahead of the voter posse. JANUARY 7, 2010. Something odd is happening to the permanent liberal majority that the U.S. was supposed to have elected 14 months ago: Its Members are announcing plans to leave Congress even before the voters get a chance to pass judgment on their liberal governance. "This is my moment to step aside," Christopher Dodd said yesterday in front of the East Haddam, Connecticut home that he financed with the help of a Countrywide Financial VIP loan. The 65-year-old, five-term Senator said his decision not to seek re-election was his own, but there's little doubt he was heading toward a well-earned defeat this fall amid personal scandal and an angry electorate unsettled by the Obama-Pelosi agenda. A day earlier, North Dakota's 67-year-old Byron Dorgan announced he also won't seek re-election. Though a left-winger in a conservative state, Mr. Dorgan's brand of prairie populism has sold well enough to keep him in Washington for 30 years, and the Senate for three terms. Mr. Dorgan has not had a truly close election since Barack Obama was in grade school, but this year he might have faced popular GOP Governor John Hoeven in a state where 64% of those polled in December by Rasmussen Reports opposed ObamaCare. Mr. Hoeven, if he runs, or some other Republican will likely win the seat, assuming the GOP is remotely competent. The Dodd retirement means that his seat is also up for grabs. We wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Dodd, so far down in the polls, was told by fellow Democrats that he needed to clear the field for someone with a chance to win in the bluish state. Democrats think that man is the seemingly eternal state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, but the national environment favors Republicans. As the state's highest-ranking law-enforcement official, Mr. Blumenthal rejected any suggestion of investigating the state's senior Senator for his participation in Countrywide's VIP program. This may make voters rightly skeptical of his potential to be an agent of change. Mr. Blumenthal certainly offers nothing new on policy for those voters grown weary of Mr. Dodd's agenda. The potential for GOP gains in these states, and others, underscores how much the Democrats' 60-seat Senate majority is a fleeting historical accident. Alaska Republican Ted Stevens barely lost even after he was convicted of a crime that was overturned after the election. Trailing after election night in 2008, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken surged to victory during a "recount" distinguished by more ballots than voters in 25 precincts and preposterous inconsistency in the enforcement of rules by the state's Canvassing Board. Pennsylvanian Arlen Specter switched parties last year after his vote for the Obama stimulus became so unpopular that he concluded he could never win again as a Republican. The looming collapse of the Democrats' momentarily filibuster-proof majority is reason enough not to ram through a health-care bill on a partisan vote. The brute political force will only look more willful and dismissive of public opinion. The other immediate policy implication is that Republicans now have a much stronger hand to reject Mr. Dodd's blueprint for financial reform. Combining a safety net for too-big-to-fail behemoths with expensive consumer regulation that would fall on small community banks, his proposal has a limited constituency outside Goldman Sachs. Republicans should resist the collegial urge to bestow a taxpayer-funded capstone on Mr. Dodd's Congressional career. They are likely to be in a much stronger position in 2011. online.wsj.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (37937)	8/1/2010 2:24:46 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The financial services 'reform' mess J.C. WATTS During my service in Congress, whenever legislation was dubbed "reform" it was especially necessary to analyze the details and consequences. So it is with congressional passage of President Barack Obama's financial services "reform"-- the biggest expansion of government power over banks and private markets since the Great Depression. The Wall Street Journal reports that the 2,300-page law-- crafted by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.-- requires no fewer than 243 new rules by 11 federal agencies. "A general attack on our free enterprise system," is how a frustrated U.S. Chamber of Commerce describes the law that will make it tougher for consumers and small businesses to borrow money. Critics have focused on the bill's costs and how it may affect access to credit. They warned that forcing banks to raise more capital will crimp their ability to advance loans, or raise the cost of doing so; tougher derivatives rules could raise the cost of hedging for companies that use these instruments in daily operations. Again, as The Wall Street Journal reports, tougher consumer rules could further pinch credit -- especially for people with lower incomes. Harvey Pitt, a former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is especially blunt. He says this so-called reform is "likely to take a badly broken regulatory system and make it worse. This legislation fixes nothing, accomplishes nothing, yet promises everything. "Legal and consulting fees will skyrocket. This bill is truly the 'Lawyers and Consultants' Full Employment Act of 2010. Most of the attempted reforms are poorly drafted or contain loopholes so large that a fleet of trucks could get past the supposed barriers. Where the bill accomplishes something it is likely to harm competition ?. and boost the performance of commercial and investment banks outside the U.S.," Pitt says. Will this bill prevent another crisis like the one that erupted in October of 2008? Absolutely not. The biggest financial players of 2008 that caused and contributed to the economic meltdown with reckless and criminal conduct aren't being punished or controlled. The Wall Street Journal editorially notes, "(I)nstead of immediately assessing a tax on large financial companies to pay for future bailouts, the final version simply authorizes the bailouts to occur first. The money to pay for them will then be collected via a tax on the remaining firms." This is no different than having your neighbor go bankrupt and you have to pay his debt. Perhaps most infuriating is this financial overhaul ignores the fate of the mortgage-finance giants that fueled the housing bubble that led to the 2008 meltdown -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee over $5 trillion of the nation's $10 trillion of mortgages. Dodd says this legislation ends the "too big to fail" debate. Not so. Freddie Mac lost another $6.7 billion the first quarter of 2010 and therefore needs another big cash infusion from taxpayers. Combined with Fannie Mae's gouging of the taxpayers, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the American people will spend $389 billion bailing out these two misfits by 2019. And Dodd continues to claim that taxpayers are no longer exposed to "too big to fail." These two government entities were created to make it easier for Americans to buy more expensive housing. In 1993 the Clinton administration pushed Fannie and Freddie to loosen once-strict purchasing requirements. By 1996, regulations required that a whopping 40 percent of all loans bought by these two entities come from people with below-median incomes. They even began buying subprime securities -- which turbocharged America down the path of an economic meltdown. I also might add that the Bush administration pushed Fannie and Freddie to participate in their housing initiative. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations were guilty of creating home ownership with bad foundations. The Democrats say they will deal with the housing finance restructuring next year. Taxpayers can only hope the Democrats are no longer in power to do more damage in that area, because they still want taxpayers to front the government money if Fannie and Freddie are neutered. Congress could have strengthened the existing bankruptcy system, and actually allowed firms "too big to fail" to go under. But the Democrat leadership would never allow it. That, you see, would defeat the goal of this latest "reform"-- to transfer even more power to the federal government. Furthermore, Washington hopes taxpayers won't remember that these are the same government agencies which failed to foresee the 2008 crisis until it was too late. J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com) is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. lvrj.com