In Bed with the Devil - The White House and Special Interests

.

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's fiery tongued Chief of Staff, was recruited into the president's inner sanctum because of his Wall Street connections and his ruthless negotiating skills and in the first two years his success at extracting money from special interests was near legendary.

As a result the Obama administration became the most expensive money could buy shattering campaign spending records, nearly a billion dollar cost to get elected, and shaking down corporate and special interests after getting elected at a pace never seen in our nation's capitol before.

From the Wall Street bankers to health care industries the special interest money poured into campaign coffers after the election and most went to the Democrat majority controlling the business of our nation the Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Democratic party campaign committees. In fact, the federal lobbyists in 2009 spent the following money lobbying our government officials and feeding campaign funds.

Open Secrets.org - Center for Responsive Government

2009 Expenditures

Pharmaceutical/Health Care - $267,853,947
Business Associations - $183,498,730
Oil & Gas - $175,079,824
Insurance - $164,411,830
Electric Utilities - $145,691,753
Computers/Internet - $119,370,418
Misc Manufacturing & Distribution - $110,769,964
Hospitals/Nursing Homes - $107,892,681
TV/Movies/Music - $107,496,953
Education - $99,816,801
Securities & Investment - $94,135,458
Health Professionals - $84,284,513
Air Transport - $83,876,931
Civil Servants/Public Officials - $83,861,329
Health Services/HMOs - $74,234,045

Of course the two major legislative bills pushed by Obama were health care reform and financial reform, both of which were managed by Emanuel and passed this year. Deals were made between Rahm and the pharmaceutical boys with details yet to be disclosed. If we add the total health spending lobbying in 2009 to the spending in the first half of 2010 we see $1 billion was spent by the industry to get what they wanted.

A similar astounding spending spree went into financial reform by the business community as the total 2009 and 2010 spending totaled $472 million to get a watered down financial reform bill. Industry by industry the Obama administration, who pledged to get rid of special interest influence in Washington, set records in sucking money into the campaign coffers.

The payoff to the lobbyists can be equally staggering. The pharma companies were able to increase the cost of major drugs by over 8% last year while the inflation rate for America was under 1% yet there was no outcry on behalf of the people by the White House or Obama people. And as for Wall Street, the administration complained of the billions of dollars in executive bonuses yet did nothing to stop them.

Money controls our nation's capitol and the Obama administration played politics as usual better than anyone in history. This fall the people of America have the chance to rate the performance of the Obama and Democratic majority and the outcome will not be pretty.

Perhaps, the outsiders and new faces can get in office and start the road to recovery with meaningful campaign reform and limitations on the ability of special interests to buy our government.

.

Obama Gets Financial Reform as Wall Street Giant Goldman gets off the Hook again!

.


The same day President Obama got his watered down Financial Reform bill through Congress his Administration let the top Wall Street contributor to his campaign, bad boy Goldman Sachs, off the hook with a paltry settlement for financial misconduct to the surprise of Wall Street watchers.

While claiming victory with the financial regulations, it might prove bittersweet to the Administration since Goldman, whose reckless investing many believe nearly brought down the economy, was given a paltry fine of $550 million for stock fraud and lying to investors.



The total fine for Goldman, while not admitting guilt, was half of what the street expected and amounted to just 15 days profit at Wall Street's most profitable bad boy. Since the American public lost trillions of dollars because of this and other actions by Goldman and others it was sorry testament to the enforcement capability of the Administration as they failed to make Goldman an example of Wall Street excess.

To add insult to injury for the American public, the terms of the settlement which allowed Goldman to pay the fine but plea no contest, thus avoid pleading guilty, also allows Goldman to write off the entire cost of the fine, all $550 million, as a business expense thus gaining a huge tax windfall for defrauding investors. Some punishment.



The Obama administration already let Goldman recover 100% of their derivative exposure, which did bring down the economy, when Goldman received $12.9 billion, yes billion, from the federal money going to AIG. In addition Goldman was granted access to discounted Fed funds thus insuring they would make billions of dollars in profits, and spend billions of dollars on executive bonuses, even though their actions helped cause the world economic collapse.

It is clear the Democrats are incapable of launching any kind of reasonable investigation of Goldman with all the former Goldman employees working for the Obama administration, so maybe a Republican victory in the midterm elections could finally result in unveiling the deep, dark secrets of the relationship between Barack Obama and Goldman Sachs.



No answers have ever been offered to questions like the role Goldman played in Obama's 2006 Illinois Senate race when Obama was an underdog and his opponents in the democratic primary and the general election both withdrew from the campaign at the last minute. There are claims one sold his business to Goldman and the other worked for Goldman.

Goldman secretly met with Obama in Chicago before the presidential campaign and became his largest Wall Street contributor as well as bundler for many millions more in contributions. They also sponsored a secret debate in NYC for Obama with Tom Brokaw as moderator to prep him for debating Hillary Clinton in the primary.

Was there any coincidence that the Goldman settlement came the same day as the new financial regulations were approved to crack down on Wall Street? Of course the new regulations are not effective until Obama signs them and he won't do that until next week.



How did Goldman manage to do what they did and only get a slight slap on the wrist when it cost the taxpayers trillions of dollars in losses? Was there any discussion about Goldman between Obama and Warren Buffett, one of the largest stockholders in Goldman, when they met privately the day the settlement was announced.

If the Democrat leaders in Congress are going to ignore the suspicious activity between Goldman and Obama and his campaign, not to mention their influence on his staff which has benefitted Goldman to the tune of billions of dollars since Obama got elected, then what value is any financial reform?

When the truth about what transpired comes out it may indeed be a bittersweet victory for the administration for how can they claim they have cracked down on Wall Street when they just allowed their biggest Wall Street campaign contributor to raid the public treasury for billions of dollars while costing Main Street trillions of dollars in losses?

People should demand Congress rip the veil off of any misconduct that might have taken place between the Obama campaign and Goldman, the billion dollar beneficiary of the Obama Wall Street crackdown.

.

How long can Obama chase Don Quixote's Windmill? A Fool can only fool himself!

.


The more pressure on the president the more he reacts like a trapped rat than the leader of the greatest free nation on Earth. As his sagging personal popularity polls continue to drop down to the level of the polls showing a public dislike for his policies, Obama continues to act like a spoiled aristocrat from the Ivy League blaming everyone but himself for his misfortunes.



It seems no one in the Chicago White House ever got the message that when he was elected it was to serve all the people all the time, not just friends, cronies, campaign contributors and celebrities. Obama lost the hope he supposedly brought to the presidency when he forgot the campaign was over a year and a half ago.

Ever since whenever things have got tough, and he should have known being president was no cakewalk, his modus operandi is to attack the critics, attack the Republicans, attack George Bush, attack the media, and one of these days the Harvard boy Obama will start attacking Yale for giving us 20 years of presidents before Obama came along.



In spite of his ruthless attacks against Sarah Palin for being inexperienced during the campaign, Obama has proven over and over that the greatest myth of his campaign claims was having any experience of his own whatsoever that might help prepare him to be president.

Last night he again attacked the Republicans, then attacked George Bush at length, for all the woes he faces as president. Didn't Obama do his homework when he was a candidate and know what was going on with the government?



If he really was experienced he would have known about our problems because he would have been on the Senate floor voting on the very problems he bemoans today instead of missing Senate votes because he was too busy campaigning.

By the way Mr. President, the last two years Bush was president your very own Democrats controlled the House, which controls the budget, which approved the deficits in the first place.

Last night he also viciously lashed out at those who say government is too big, as if everyone opposed to big government is a right wing Republican. Here his pollsters led him astray. The vast majority of Independents are opposed to big government and deficit spending and even a substantial number of Democrats know we are on a runaway train to oblivion.



Obama seems to be declaring everyone who doesn't want big government should not benefit from the government, a typical Chicago attitude to punish the disloyal while rewarding the insiders. Well Mr. President, it is not your government and not your tax money you are spending like some stoned punk at a frat party.

You have entered the real world and your time is running out to get real. This fall the people of America will give you a good education on politics. The people will bring your endless partisan and divisive political campaigning to a conclusion by stripping what little political strength you have left and taking back control of the Congress. You deserve no less.



At that point you will be a toothless tiger. However, if you continue to act as a picked on member of the elite frat pack and continue to try and manipulate the government to serve your own selfish purposes and agenda you will become the biggest liability of our future.

The majority of Americans who oppose big government and deficit spending have already tired of your politics of excuses and blame, finger pointing and character assassination, and it better end. If not, your performance will become the subject of debate on the national agenda and the new Independent controlled Congress will turn attention on how to limit the powers of a disconnected president to keep him from permanently damaging our Republic.

The future of America is in danger. Not because we face insurmountable problems. Not because we cannot fix our regulatory process. Not because corruption runs too deep. Not because any other nation is a viable national security threat. No, our danger comes from within.

Our government of the people and by the people has been hijacked by your gang of thugs who are trying to bring about radical change in spite of the will of the people. We had a pretty good country before you took over. Now we are becoming the laughing stock of the international community. At home there are no true Americans in your world, only those for and against your radical agenda.

Patriots in America are defenders of freedom and the greatest freedom we have you are trying to steal from us. Big government and deficit spending are the enemies of freedom and the antitheses of the freedoms inherent in the American Republic. You are supposed to be on our side Mr. President. We gave you the chance to serve us.



You want to help you can start with this. Campaign reform, the greatest need and only major issue totally ignored by you since you spent almost a billion dollars to buy the presidency. Public financing with no media ads is the only solution. Anything less is a sea of corruption.

We all want alternative energy but we are not fools. Today conventional energy is our life source. A prudent energy policy will seek out all forms of conventional energy in America to break the dependence on foreign oil. It will also set in motion a long term conversion to alternative energy because to do anything less is economically suicidal.



Real health care reform. So far you have paved the pockets of special interests and health care lobbyists with gold, protected the pharmaceutical and insurance industries ability to steal from the public, assured that health care costs can never go down, and generally made a mess of the health care delivery system.

Now fix it so we are encouraged to get well, not stay sick. If someone is healthy and does not need a doctor give them back the money they paid for health insurance. Stop FDA from accepting bribes from the pharmaceutical companies for the massive cost for New Drug Approval. It is the same conflict of interest that got the SEC in trouble with the banks and Interior Department in trouble with the oil companies.



We have over 2.5 million defense soldiers and civilian employees but only 1.1 million are in the USA. Since about 100,000 are in both Iraq and Afghanistan that leaves 1.2 million DOD employees all over the rest of the world. There are over 735 American military bases outside the USA including 38 large and medium size facilities. At the height of the British Empire in 1898 they had 36 bases spread out around the world and at the height of the Roman Empire in 117 AD they had 37 major bases. Of course they were both trying to conquer the world. We aren't supposed to be conquering the world so get rid of the excess bases.

In financial reform we have fixed everything but the problem, even with the new reform bill. If congress and the president continue to insist housing and derivatives should not be part of the bill then it is a joke. Eliminate unregulated derivatives and stop short selling which contributes nothing to managing the economy but is just a lame excuse for investment houses to steal from the market.

The object of the capitalist markets was to bring about orderly economic development while allowing investors to share in the profits. The result was to make money available to small business to build the economy. If a practice on Wall Street does not serve that purpose then stop it. Right now there is no capital available to small business, no credit from banks, yet all the banks are drawing discounted money from the Federal Reserve. Obama has done nothing but encourage the crooks on Wall Street and we are just as vulnerable as ever.

Our president has more than enough things to do to help and most of those things continue to eat away at the America spirit and budget. After all this time as president, it is clear Obama is not going to get it. We must start preparing to get control of the government back from the political hacks in our nation's capital who are in the pockets of the special interests. Obama is now a part of the problem.

.

The Week in Review - Politics, Pollution, Procrastination and Prayer - What a Future!

.


On the political front there were primaries and two special elections. The anti-incumbents won in Kentucky and Pennsylvania sending a signal to both Democrat and Republican parties. Then in the special elections a far more conservative Democrat than the moderate Republican won in Pennsylvania and a far more conservative Republican than two Democrats won in Hawaii. For the week the real winners were the conservative public, especially united in their opposition to the Obama and Democrats madcap spending addiction and total disregard for the spiraling federal deficit.

Also in politics Rand Paul, Kentucky Tea Party winner, naively mistook victory for a honeymoon with the press and found out just how deep and devious the venom of left wing media can be when he made his first appearances on the radical left PBS and MSNBC bastions. By weeks end someone finally took Rand to the woodshed for a little education in surviving with the sharks of the elite media.



Our self-proclaimed transparent president Barack Obama knows all about media and how fast they can turn on you and has been doing a good job of manipulating them. You would never know it, but Obama has not had an open news conference, one in which the media can ask about anything, since last July. Even George Bush held open news conferences twice a month throughout his eight year term. Obama has gone 10 months with no open news conference.

On the pollution front the BP oil spill has been partly stopped, and an effort to seal it will be made in the next couple of days. No one knows how many thousands of barrels have already escaped or how far it will be spread. There are predictions for catastrophic damage and losses, much from the seemingly thousands of lawyers lined up to sue everyone for damages which will line the pockets of the lawyers but do little to help the local economy.



The Obama administration may wind up being one of the biggest losers in this disaster because they were too busy playing politics to make sure their own regulatory agencies did their regulating. Yes there were problems with the technology, with the equipment and with the procedures, but there were also problems with the Obama people who have had nearly a year and a half to investigate their regulatory agencies and make sure all safety and equipment inspections take place. If the regulators were too cozy with the oil industry it was Obama's fault, they reported to him.

On the financial front we teetered on the brink of disaster over the European crisis and are far from out of it yet. After the shocking stock collapse the week before we got a report from Obama's SEC and other agencies saying it will take several more weeks to repair the regulatory flaws before they are sure the crash of 1000 Dow points in minutes won't happen again. No that is not very reassuring. Why don't they just declare an emergency and fix the damn mess?

Also on the financial front the Senate approved a version of the financial reform act, now it goes to a conference with the House and final action is expected by July. That means it took Congress three years since the housing meltdown and two years since the banking meltdown to start to fix the problems. It also means it will have taken President Obama and his Calvary of change agents about 18 months to come up with a fix for the economy. If that is rapid response by the president and the Democrats controlling Congress we are in very serious trouble.

When the bill goes to conference with the House it still contains some derivative language the banks hate and still makes no mention of the housing crisis which triggered the collapse of the economy. Rumor has it that no Democrat in Congress has the guts to say the strict derivative language should be dropped to satisfy the big bankers who financed the campaigns of Obama and the Congress. So watch to see if Obama, who has tried to paint a picture of himself as champion of the bank bashers, is not the one to request the derivative language be modified in order to protect the Democrats up for re-election.



If you doubt his claim as the champion bank basher just look at this letter I got from him this week. It came from the barackobama.com committee:

Jim --

On Thursday, the Senate passed historic Wall Street reform. This movement proved again that the strongest special interests, who for so long have called the shots in Washington, can be beat.
When opponents in Congress tried to block the legislation altogether, you stood up -- and they backed down. When the lobbyists pushed for loopholes and exemptions just before a final vote, you did not relent -- and we fought them off.
Your support brought us to this day -- and, because of that, we're poised to implement sensible reforms that will provide a stronger foundation for economic growth.
Now, the House and Senate must iron out their differences before I can sign it into law. But the financial industry will not give up. They have already spent more than $1 million per member of Congress, lobbying on this issue. And in the coming days, they will go all in. This is their last shot to stall, weaken, or kill reform, and they are not accustomed to losing.
But this movement has you -- and together, we have beaten the special interests before.
Please donate $5 or more today to help Organizing for America continue to mobilize thousands -- to counter the special interests' attacks and get strong Wall Street reform to my desk.
Every American has a stake in this bill.
If you have ever been treated unfairly by a credit card company, this reform works for you -- never again will Americans be duped by fine print or hidden fees.
If you ever try to take out a home loan or student loan, this reform works for you -- putting an end to predatory and deceptive lending practices.
And, if you or your small business relies on credit from community banks that are being punished for playing by the rules while their competitors do not, this reform works for you -- reining in the big banks and making sure all our lenders are subject to tough oversight.
These reforms would put in place the strongest consumer financial protections in history. And, by helping safeguard our economy from recklessness on Wall Street, it would ensure that a crisis like the one that caused this recession never happens again.
This is not a zero-sum game where Wall Street loses and Main Street wins. As we have learned, in today's economy, we are all connected. When the economy prospers, we all win. Senators of both parties recognize that fact, and that is why lawmakers stood up to the lobbyists and worked across the aisle to ensure that Wall Street reform passed.
But this fight is not yet over. And it is up to us to overcome this final test and pass reform into law. When we do, the power of this movement to make change in Washington -- despite the best efforts of the special interests -- will no longer be up for debate.
Please donate $5 or more today:
https://donate.barackobama.com/WSRSenateVictory
Thank you,
President Barack Obama



If Obama makes any move to change the reform legislation and water down the derivatives section he is a total hypocrite. Besides, aren't all lobbyist committees required to be registered lobbyists? If Obama can have a committee directly lobbying for a bill and raising millions of dollars to do it aren't they a lobbyist and special interest too? Yes we are back into the silly season.

As for pollution, BP is still struggling to clean up the spill and seal off the leak. Congressional hearings have already pointed out flaws in the regulatory process by the Obama people for not doing safety inspections and in the oil industry for not solving all safety problems, testing new technology and not having a plan for such a disaster.

While the leak will get sealed at some point, the clean up of oil already leaked is the source of much wild speculation and certain to be the target of multi-billion dollar damage suits by every lawyer who is part of the number one contributor to the Obama campaign and the Democrats running Congress. At least the unemployment rate for lawyers is sure to go down.



As for speculation about how serious the spill will be, I have my on speculation to throw in the mixing pot. We all know that oil leaking into the ocean is a normal thing and there are microbes in the ocean that feed off the oil. Normally there is not this much oil for feeding the microbes. So I predict that with hurricane season a week away there will be tropical storms and hurricanes that hit the gulf.

All the surface oil will most likely reduce the destruction by the storms because they have to move across heavy water with all the oil in it. However, the churning seas will widely disperse and break up the concentrations of oil in the gulf. The natural process will enable the microbes to attack the oil residue much more aggressively. At the same time the turbulence of the gulf and the massive volume of water thrown onto the shores by the hurricanes will help clean up the shore and wetlands that have been contaminated with oil.

The liberal media have said it will take many billions of dollars and more than a decade to clean up the mess. I say with the help of Mother Nature and/or Divine Intervention because of all the prayers being offered for help, the damage and length of time to recover could be far less. Sometimes it takes supernatural action to clean up the mess of men.

On the immigration front the liberals continue to bellow like stuck pigs about the Arizona law that has been significantly modified since original passage. Neither Obama nor the Democratic leadership in Congress will admit that Arizona was forced to act because Congress and the president decided it was too risky to push immigration reform with the November elections. That sounds more like backroom politics than leadership.

Of course the California liberals have followed suit and are trying to adopt restrictions in travel to Arizona to penalize the Arizona people. That sounds more like an action you would find in Soviet Russia than America. How can a state adopt any action that grossly discriminates against another state and ignores the fact the Congress and president failed to do their job? Only the liberals can figure out such bizarre strategies. And yes, as I said in an earlier article, Arizona has now threatened to shut off the electricity to California if they discriminate as they threatened. More than 25% of Los Angeles electricity comes from across the border in Arizona.

Top of all this activity off with the fact that Obama, after running around the country holding a series of press opportunities to boast of how the economy has turned around thanks to his trillion dollar deficit spending, watched helplessly as the stock market lost more value than any week since the economic crash. Of course Obama was just staying away from Washington for the week because of the election losses and mismanagement of the oil spill but he still claimed credit for fixing things prematurely, a fitting exclamation point on how little he still understands his job.



Let's see, Europe is on the brink of economic disaster, the national debt exceeds $13trillion, North Korea is charged with sinking a South Korean ship, Iran cuts nuclear deals as Obama tries to shut them down in the UN, the death toll of American military in Afghanistan passes 1,000, the stock market falls the most since the crash, oil continues spilling in the Gulf, financial reform moves forward as immigration reform moves backward, and the only thing PBS, MSNBC, NBC and ABC can ask Rand Paul is about the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed by Lyndon Johnson. Now what is wrong with this picture?

.

Financial Reform Moves Forward - What Must Be Fixed to Make it Real?

.


Now that the Senate Republicans have agreed to debate the financial reform bill we will finally get to see the real intent of Congress to tackle the Wall Street problems. Missing from the Democrat bill the media claims the GOP was blocking, when in fact the GOP wants it just as bad as the Democrats, are a number of critical elements that better be addressed in the floor debate.



First, the major cause of the economic collapse was the housing element in which sub-prime mortgages were forced on the public by the drop in mortgage standards by our monstrous housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These federally funded agencies who insure most of the mortgages in America reduced down payments from 20% to zero and allowed a technique called the Stated Income loan, or NIV for "No Income Verification". Most fraud on mortgage applications resulted from use of this technique in which applicants would just state how much income they earned without offering proof. This opened the floodgates to fraud.

Now a second feature of the extent of fraud and deception came in the repackaging of the loans into pools, called collateralized debt obligations, CDO, which was how Wall Street intended to cash in on the trillions of dollars in the mortgage market and the astounding increase in home values in the decade before 2006. Of course the demand for CDOs continued long after the housing market became stagnant and it became obvious certain markets were far overpriced.



To keep the housing market moving the Federal Reserve steps in and buys mortgage backed securities from the two housing agencies and banks. By March 31, 2010, the Federal Reserve had purchased $1.2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities from banks and $200 billion of direct obligation debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for total purchases of $1.4 trillion. As a result of these actions, the Federal Reserve now owns almost 25% of the stock of mortgage-backed bonds. Assuming that banks turned these excess reserves into loans at a typical 10:1 ratio, the increase in money supply would be $12 trillion. That's more than the current amount of outstanding mortgages in the United States!

Finally, the Treasury Department has estimated the total additional US spending to prop up the two federal agencies will be $188 billion dollars. This is above and beyond the Fed money. Treasury says $85 billion will be lost along with $49 billion in foreclosure activity by Treasury, a total of $237 billion in taxpayer exposure with a total loss expected of at least $134 billion. That means we will have about $1.5 trillion at risk in supporting the housing market.



Nothing in Senate financial reform bill addresses the issues concerning housing including the CDO issue, relaxed down payments, the stated income loans, Treasury aid, foreclosure aid and Federal Reserve aid, all of which is still at risk. That means the predator mortgages, fraudulent mortgages, even foreclosures saved by the government will cost the government at least $134 billion. That sounds like an incredible windfall for all the thieves who ripped off the government. A reason for the omission may be that the changes in federal rules and policy that led to the actions were approved late in the Clinton administration, a move Clinton already acknowledged was a failure of his to stop his people from changing the rules.



The Senate bill also fails to address the conflict of interest of the credit reporting agencies who gave the CDO packages triple A ratings to help sell them even though many were defaulting within months after issue. Since the brokerage houses selling the packages were paying the millions of dollars in lucrative fees made by the credit agencies, there was intense competition to approve them regardless of the real value of the mortgage pool. Some contained as much as 90% stated income mortgages. Nothing is in the Senate bill to stop the conflict of interest nor punish credit agencies for fraudulent ratings.



Also there is nothing in the bill to review the actions by the government that opened the floodgates to bank control over the economy. Once again the absence of this area may well be inspired by the fact it was the Clinton people who made the changes. In the '90s Wall Street took over Clinton's Treasury Department and all of the regulatory agencies (Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin came from Goldman Sachs). In 1998 Rubin, his deputy Larry Summers, Allen Greenspan (Fed Chairman) and Arthur Levitt (SEC Chairman) gave Wall Street a major victory -- defeating a modest proposal to regulate the then nascent, exploding derivatives market (e.g., mortgage backed securities). In 1999 Glass-Steagall was repealed. From 1995 to 2009 the six biggest banks (Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America) grew from 20 percent to 62 percent of GDP. These Wall Street victories gave us the Great Recession of 2008.



Finally there is the Consumer Protection Agency offered by Obama. For some odd reason he places it under the Federal Reserve which operates autonomous from the government and whose actions also played a role in the financial collapse. That is a big mistake. If anything, we should be auditing the Federal Reserve to find out what they are doing with America's currency, not adding to their powers.
.

The Shootout at the Capitol Corral - Congress versus Goldman Sachs

.


After two weeks of pre-meditated murder by Obama, the SEC, Senator Carl Levin, Senator Chris Dodd and the Democratic leadership in Congress, in which the president and his gang pilloried the Demons from Wall Street, the heavy weights from Goldman went before Congress in a 10 hour marathon Tuesday for a public shootout.

It was no contest. The Democrats had virtually persecuted the Goldman gang in the days leading up to the hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with civil charges from the SEC, a public scolding from former Goldman poster boy Obama, and charges of misconduct by the two Senators in their haste to get a financial reform bill through the Senate.



The court of public opinion was swayed, but not convinced, that the Obama style of liberal spending and bigger government was needed, but it was not over yet. That had to be decided in the outcome of the hearing. But this shootout was a rerun of the most famous shootout in the history of the wild west, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.



The gunfight at the O.K. Corral has been portrayed in numerous Western films. It has come to symbolize the struggle between law-and-order and open-banditry in frontier towns of the Old West, where law enforcement was often weak or nonexistent. The fateful battle took place in Tombstone, Arizona, where Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and McLaurys.

One group of fighters represented rural Democrats from Texas who were involved in the cattle-trade in a remote area of Arizona territory which had been desert just a few years before. The other faction, (the Earps) had come from the East with the frontier, and represented the very different city interests of Yankee Republican capitalists and businessmen who were attempting to manage a silver-mining boom-town with Eastern expectations of behavior.



The battle left three rural Democrats dead and the Yankee Republican capitalists in control and the outcome of the shootout at the Capitol Corral had just about the same outcome. Before the dust had settled the Democrat Senators with their thousands of pages of briefings, tons of staff and seats behind the elevated bench were outfoxed, outclassed, outsmarted and out to lunch. The Yankee capitalists had won again.

Now I worked on the hill a couple of times and have been to many a hearing and I do not remember a time when the Congress ever looked so disheveled, disoriented, ill-prepared and out matched than this particular hearing. The politicians, well they looked every bit the good old boys and the Goldman gang the city slickers. This battle turned out no different than the last shootout back in 1881.



Of course the liberal media are sure to paint a different picture because the Democrats are their champions of the far left redistribution of wealth philosophy and Heavens knows the media may soon be out of work and in need of a redistribution of wealth to take care of them. But the outcome of this battle was never in doubt to any honest observer.



Three levels of Goldmanites testified with the junior executives first, the senior executives second, and the CEO Lloyd Blankfein last. Committee Chairman Carl Levin started out the attack, and his effort soon withered into a constant repetition of the same old question because a socialist thinker clearly has no clue how a capitalist system works. The juniors executives had him so flustered he constantly was searching through the thousands of pages of documentation trying to figure out where in the world the emails he quoted were to be found.

Like good junior execs, the Dapper Dans from Goldman seemed to be taking forever to find whatever the Senators were talking about. There was little continuity in the questions and no follow up questions, even when the opportunity presented itself. As the hearing droned on and on with each Senator grilling the Goldman gang the interrogators got more and more confused until one might have asked what they were doing at the hearing.

When the senior executives took the floor and started explaining the complex and highly complicated world of Wall Street high finance, as played by the biggest and best in the world, the look of utter confusion was in all the Senate faces. One by one they acknowledged defeat when they admitted they did not understand the intricacies nor mind set of Wall Street.



By the time Blankfein took the center seat even John McCain, with all his years of experience, was left befuddled and dazed. The white flag of surrender was raised and finally the hearing was brought to a close. Perhaps the power of Goldman was most obvious by the fact the New York Stock Exchange, and every foreign stock exchange in the world, crashed when the hearing started and the Dow was down over 200points before it was through.

When the actions against Goldman can cause world stock markets to tumble one can only surmise Congress might have underestimated their standing. But Goldman went further as the Goldman stock was about the only publicly traded stock to gain in value on this day. It was an exclamation mark on the power of the money changers.

To be honest, I have done many critical articles about the activities of Goldman over the past few years and was hoping some of my questions would be answered. They were not to be. Our Senators seemed to lose their minds when attempting to extract guilty pleas or inside information to prove how dastardly Goldman had acted during the economic meltdown.



By the end of the hearing Goldman was assuring Congress they would help the committee with new provisions of the financial reform bill that would have a chance of meeting the needs of America while bringing some sort of discipline, ethics and transparency to the Wall Street wagering in the markets.

That's a good thing since no members of the Committee seemed to comprehend what was going on. Obama is certain to have no comment as what is there for him to say? Tuesday was a big victory for Goldman. They demonstrated that no matter how intense their opposition may come after them, they are up to the challenge.

Perhaps now the stock market can continue it's upward momentum. And one last point on the fading liberal power of the Obama Democrat machine. About midway through the hearing the committee took a recess so the Senators could go vote on the procedure to move the financial reform bill to the floor. It was the second straight day good old Harry Reid brought it up for a vote and for the second straight day the Republicans and a Democrat defeated the Obama initiative.

.

Could Goldman Bring Down the Obama Gang and the Republicans?

.


As Obama turns up the heat on financial reform and Republicans resist the financial reform bill proposed by Senator Chris Dodd a dangerous game is being played in Washington. Polls just came out that show three fourths of all Americans do not trust the government. With the partisan nature of debate in the capitol and the propensity of the Obama White House to call for bi-partisanship while attacking anyone who questions the partisan Democrats, is it no wonder the public trusts no one?



Then along comes the SEC with fraud charges against the king of the banking community Goldman Sachs. Goldman, the perfect target for venting American frustration with the motives and interests of the banks and their apparent total disregard for public opinion as noted from their multi-billion dollar bonuses, occupies a most unusual position in politics.

First there is the self described mission of the CEO Lloyd Blankfein as told to John Arlidge of the TimesOnline. As John wrote:

So, it’s business as usual, then, regardless of whether it makes most people howl at the moon with rage? Goldman Sachs, this pillar of the free market, breeder of super-citizens, object of envy and awe will go on raking it in, getting richer than God? An impish grin spreads across Blankfein’s face. Call him a fat cat who mocks the public. Call him wicked. Call him what you will. He is, he says, just a banker "doing God’s work"

"Just a banker doing God's work." One wonders what God he is referring to when making such an outrageous statement. Was it Yahweh or Ba'al and was it the Hebrew Ba'al or Christian Baal? Most people would believe the only God Goldman is working for is a false god or idol and we know what kond of agenda that god is pursuing.



Still Goldman, after watching and most likely contributing to the destruction of two of their major competitors, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and then getting the Federal Reserve to change a long standing policy and allow Goldman to change from investment bank to commercial bank thus allowing them to feed at the trough of almost no interest government money while continuing to invest in high risk deals, is in a league of its own in world banking.



A frequent collaborator with the most powerful and secret banking family in history, the House of Rothschild and their army of surrogates, Goldman is the most visible bank in politics of all time. It may just be that this penchant for publicity and obsession with power on the part of Goldman has put them on a collision course in their desire to remain king of the hill.



Now the danger to politicians is greater than ever regarding their association with Goldman or any effort that could be perceived to protect Goldman during debate on the financial reform bill. To begin to understand the problem consider the following as reported by OpenSecrets.org under the Center for Responsive Government:



Top Political Contributors in federal elections since 1989

AT&T, Inc. $44,361,209.
American Fed of State, County & Muni Employees $42,248,261
National Association of Realtors $35,733,073
Intern Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $31,660,630
American Assn for Justice $31,645,679
Goldman Sachs $31,612,375
National Education Assn $30,194,067
Laborers Union $29,132,400
Service Employees Union $28,134,482
Teamsters Union $28,029,624

Note that the American Association for Justice is the new name for the Trial Lawyers Association which gives 91% of their money to Democrats. Goldman, one of only two private companies on the top ten, normally gives 64% of their money to Democrats but gave 74% to Democrats during the Obama campaign. For all intents and purposes 8 of the top 10 contributors the past 20 years are unions.



So Goldman stands alone in pouring money into federal campaigns. But Goldman bundlers also raise money from others in their related industries so Commercial Banks contributed $222 million, Securities and Investment firms $628.9 million, Finance and Credit $59.8 million, and Insurance $327.3 million. That is well over a BILLION DOLLARS over 20 years.

If conflict of interest laws applied to congress most members could not vote for anything related to Goldman Sachs because of campaign contributions. By alas, such rules do not exist. However, in the interest of transparency and integrity all politicians should divulge their relationship with Goldman including the money donated directly and indirectly through Goldman and their dealings with Goldman as a favored special interest in Washington.

This includes an account of the involvement of Goldman from the Clinton presidency days when Goldman executives working for Clinton including Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, Clinton Treasury Secretaries, and Rahm Emanuel, chief Clinton fundraiser, were involved in changing federal regulations that allowed Goldman to capitalize on derivatives, swaps, and oil futures along with moving transactions outside the US so they could not be regulated.



These financial vehicles were adopted in 1999, the last year of Clinton's presidency, and opened the floodgates to hedge fund and others to manipulate the housing, oil, commercial real estate and commodities markets and nearly caused a worldwide depression. Just this week former President Clinton said he regretted allowing his economic advisors to make the federal rule changes. All three of the Clinton economic advisors from Goldman's are now key economic advisors to Obama.

As for transparency, if Obama intends to use Goldman's as a scapegoat then he needs to disclose his long association with Goldman as well. Dating back to his campaign for US Senate in 2004 there are questions regarding his involvement with Goldman including did they pay off the leading candidate in the Democratic primary against Obama and the Republican in the general election when they withdrew from the race for personal reasons? Also what was discussed in private corporate meetings with Obama in 2006 and 2007 in Chicago and NYC?

Finally there are the potential conflicts for the many former Goldman executives throughout the Obama administration and international financial community. Is the government protected from any actions that might benefit Goldman?

As for the Republicans, they risk being perceived as the protectors of Wall Street if they simply vote against the Senate financial reform bill. The mistrust of the public toward Washington will only be reinforced if they block the vote. They must offer a more substantial alternative than what Obama is offering that will effectively control the Wall Street abuses.

Doing nothing 2-3 years after the crash will cost them dearly in potential political gains as the public is waiting to see what congress and Obama can do in light of their cozy relationship with Goldman and other Wall Street firms.

Finally, both Obama and the Republicans can hurt themselves if they support any actions to dilute the impact of legal actions against these firms as more and more charges are filed. If they do not condemn any plea bargains that allow the companies to avoid an admission of guilt and to expense the cost of the fines then they should be held accountable. The actions of the financial community from 2007-2009 cost Americans $29 trillion in lost savings. Someone must pay for these damages.

So you see, both Obama and the Republicans can lose a lot more than they gain if they do not play by the rules, do what is good for America, and tell us exactly their relationship to Goldman. If they don't, then both sides could be a big loser.