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On the conspiracy front - this might be part of the set up to allow Bush to declare national martial law due to the economy collapse and 'postpone' the election...
H R 3997 RECORDED VOTE 29-Sep-2008 2:07 PM
QUESTION: On Concurring in Senate Amendment With An Amendment
BILL TITLE: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes
There are other alternatives and they should be explored.
ESTABLISHMENT.—ESTABLISHMENT.—There is established the Financial Stability Oversight Board, which shall be responsible for—
ESTABLISHMENT.—ESTABLISHMENT.—There is established the Financial Stability Oversight Board, which shall be responsible for—
8 (1) reviewing the exercise of authority under a
9 program developed in accordance with this Act, in
10cluding—
11 (A) any action taken by the Secretary and
12 the Office of Financial Stability created under
13 section 101, including the appointment of finan
14cial agents, the designation of asset classes to
15 be purchased, and plans for the structure of ve
16hicles used to purchase troubled assets; and
17 (B) the effect of such actions in assisting
18 American families in preserving home owner
19ship, stabilizing financial markets, and pro
20tecting taxpayers;
21 (2) making recommendations, as appropriate, to
22 the Secretary regarding use of the authority under
23 this Act; and
24 (3) reporting any suspected fraud, misrepresen
25tation, or malfeasance to the Inspector General for
15
O:\AYO\AYO08B94.xml [Discussion Draft]
1 the Department of the Treasury or the Attorney
2 General of the United States, consistent with section
3 535(b) of title 28, United States Code.
MEMBERSHIP.—The Financial Stability Over
5sight Board shall be comprised of—
6 (1) the Chairman of the Board of Governors of
7 the Federal Reserve System;
8 (2) the Secretary of the Treasury;
9 (3) the Director of the Federal Home Finance
10 Agency;
11 (4) the chairman of the Securities and Ex
12change Commission; and
13 (5) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Devel
14opment.
15 (c) CHAIRPERSON.—The chairperson of the Financial
16 Stability Oversight Board shall be elected by the members
17 of the Board from among the members.
Treasury Gets Broad Power in Bailout Bill to Hire Contractors
By Rebecca Christie
Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will have broad authority to hire financial managers quickly to help manage a $700 billion asset-purchase plan, according to the draft legislation under consideration.
The bill would allow the Treasury chief to waive federal acquisition procedures ``where compelling circumstances make compliance contrary to the public interest,'' according to a summary of the draft law. The Treasury would have to notify Congress of such waivers within seven days, and also ensure procedures are in place to reach out to minorities.
If the plan is enacted, the Treasury likely will need a lot of Wall Street expertise to manage the assets it acquires, said Tim Ryan, head of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Ryan also is former director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversaw the Resolution Trust Corp., the agency that liquidated failed thrifts after the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s.
``What we learned through the RTC process is, if we're going to throw this type of assignment at the government -- any government, state, federal, U.S., anywhere -- they're not staffed to deal with this issue,'' Ryan said in an interview last week.
Treasury's potential hiring of contractors to run the program will help because ``they'll just do a better job and they'll get it done faster, and ultimately it'll be cheaper,'' Ryan said.
Paulson has already recruited from Wall Street to help manage the current financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression. He hired Morgan Stanley on a $95,000 contract awarded under emergency procedures to help assess options for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that ultimately ended up in government conservatorship.
Goldman Sachs
Paulson also last week hired former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. colleague Edward C. Forst, now executive vice president at Harvard University, on a $5,000 contract to help with the plan.
The draft legislation would allow the Treasury to select the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as an asset manager for residential mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities. If the Treasury looks to Wall Street for other staff, it should find plenty of affordable talent, Ryan said.
``There are people in this business who know this asset class who have recently, in the last six months, lost jobs, and they'll take a lot less pay than they got the last time,'' Ryan said in the interview.
As the Wall Street bailout talks continue, a critical Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is not confident that House will pass the legislation, as he told The Hill. "If the votes were there, this would be on the floor," he said. "The votes aren't there."
"Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs?" Kucinich asked today. "Why aren't we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy. Why aren't we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street? Isn't it time for fundamental change in our debt-based monetary system, so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks?"
Kucinich attended a meeting of the "Skeptics Caucus," organized by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and consisting of House Democrats skeptical of the bailout effort. The meeting's speakers included economic professor James Galbraith of the University of Texas and former FDIC chairman William Isaac. Sherman called the legislation a Bush administration "power grab" and a handout to Wall Street. "This is greatest shift of power to the imperial presidency and the greatest shift of wealth to a still wealthy Wall Street that anyone could imagine," Sherman said.
"None of this has been subject to a critical analysis," charged Rep. Kucinich. "We haven't had access to the books to the people who are claiming they are going broke."
"They rushed this Congress into the Iraq resolution and look what happened," he added, comparing the rushed tone behind the bailout effort with the push to invade Iraq, "Catastrophe for this nation as well as for the people of Iraq."
"The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street is driven by fear, not fact," Kucinich said on the House floor Sunday. "This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings on the plan we have just received? Why aren't we questioning the underlying premise of the need for a bailout with taxpayers' money? Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation, which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets?"
Last year, ONE MILLION Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. This year, the number is expected to skyrocket. See this link:
Last year, ONE MILLION Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. This year, the number is expected to skyrocket. See this link:
ezinearticles.com...
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson
The private banks (The Federal Reserve) have precipitated this. Not only is it destroying American homes and families and our economy, it will bring down the entire global economy.
Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.
The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.
The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone.
``Today's blast of term liquidity will settle the funding markets down, and allow trust to slowly be restored between borrowers and lenders,'' said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. On the other hand, ``the Fed's balance sheet is about to explode.''
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Congress has balked at the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the "troubled assets" of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.
This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.
The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.
Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.
This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.
Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.