Write to Congress and the President: Congress Bows to Wall Street

I think it is time for the Office of Management and Budget to get authority to investigate systemic schemes like “securitization” and report back to the Public, Congress and the President on the actual effects of letting the Banks get away with this behavior. Most of the shift of wealth from the middle class has been courtesy of the banks. Even if we are inexplicably resolved to let it happen, we should at least KNOW that it is happening.

Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me

see http://www.ibtimes.com/lawmakers-attach-wall-street-deregulation-omnibus-bill-1747742

“Republicans can still relent and remove the changes to Dodd-Frank. The Rules Committee will meet Wednesday afternoon to set the technical requirements for the passage omnibus bill. During that process, the bill can be quickly amended before it heads to a full vote in the House on Thursday. But doing so will require a signoff from House Speaker John Boehner.

“This is a defining moment,” said Jeff Connaughton, a former top Senate aide and the author of the book “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins.” “Senators who say they are serious about reforming Wall Street should use their power to block this bill until these provisions are removed.”

Some years ago the banks almost got a bill through that would have validated defective and illegal instruments fabricated for purposes of foreclosure. It actually passed Congress but Obama refused to sign it. That was because many of us in media alerted everyone when the surprise bill came to light.

Now they are doing it again — only worse. Congress has now passed a budget bill which contains, deep inside of it, provisions that will allow the banks to continue controlling transactions that were designed to their sole benefit at the expense of both depositors/investors and homeowners. It virtually guarantees that there will be another crash and ANOTHER BAILOUT OF THE BANKS.

The really crazy thing about these bailouts is that it implies we are saving the banks from destruction. But the truth is that we are preserving their expected profit from completely illegal activities at the expense of the victims and at the expense of the American taxpayer. This is nuts.. Congress, at the bidding of their owners — the Banks — has now institutionalized it. It is still possible to have that provision carved out if you act fast and send letters to your Congressman, Senator and to the President. Obama doesn’t have a clue about finance and has been relying upon the advice fo people whose sole interest is to protect Banks at the expense of the American people.

In addition to all of the new provisions in this year’s budget bill, one of the worst riders from the 2014 “omnibus” bill that deregulated derivatives trading on Wall Street will remain in effect. They have now reversed essential provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act of 2010, and allows big banks to get away with the illegal, wrongful and anti-American practices that caused the weakening of the American economy over the last 40 years and in particular the 2008 financial crisis. While CitiBank lobbyists wrote the bill, it was designed to give cover to all the major banks who are continuing to pursue illegal foreclosures on behalf of phantom creditors.

Mother Jones published an article about this. Wall Street has been submitted bills on the sly for many years. This one was proposed in 2014 legislation and vanished because Citi lobbyists wrote it. Not even members of Congress would support it because everyone knew that nearly every word was written by Citi lobbyists.

But now, it suddenly reappears and Congress passed it! — enabling past abuses to continue and now enhancing those abuses so that as a matter of law, the banks can used FDIC insured money to slide around into various nefarious schemes.

Here is the the link to the Mother Jones Article entitled

Citigroup Wrote the Wall Street Giveaway The House Just Approved

Citigroup Wrote the Wall Street Giveaway The House Just Approved

the legislation was left on the table for corporate-friendly lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to now sneak into the pending spending bill. But Democratic leadership is raising concerns about the Wall Street-friendly provision. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted out a statement Wednesday morning slamming the provision for allowing “big banks to gamble with money insured by the FDIC.” And Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is calling on the House to strike the Citi-written language from the spending bill.

“I am disgusted,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House financial services committee, said in a statement. “Congress is risking our homes, jobs and retirement savings once again.”

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) issued an even more dire warning, calling the bill “a good example of capitalism’s death wish.”

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