Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his band of GOP financial
terrorists are devising an anti-poverty plan to address the crushing poverty,
illness, ignorance and starvation that has resulted from the Paul Ryan budgets
of 2011 and 2014. The plan unveiled by
House Republicans claims to attack poverty “at its roots” by rewarding work and
improving school programs. The GOP tough
love program would “stiffen” work requirements tied to welfare programs.
What the tone deaf Ryan fails to recognize is that the roots
of poverty lie in his budgets, which amount to financial terrorist attacks on
the American people. The 2014 budget
plan that took effect in 2015 slashed $4.8 trillion from social programs
designed to help low and moderate income Americans. From the Center on Budget and PolicyPriorities:
Excerpt:
Ryan Plan Gets 69 Percent of Its Budget Cuts From Programs for People With Low or Moderate Incomes
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s new budget cuts $3.3 trillion over ten years (2015-2024) from programs that serve people of limited means. That’s 69 percent of its $4.8 trillion in total non-defense budget cuts… House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s new budget cuts $3.3 trillion over ten years (2015-2024) from programs that serve people of limited means. That’s 69 percent of its $4.8 trillion in total non-defense budget cuts…
These cuts are in addition to the discretionary and entitlement cuts imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act’s (BCA) budget caps and sequestration… The $3.3 trillion figure includes:
· More than $2.7 trillion in health care reductions for low- and moderate-income people.
· $137 billion in cuts to SNAP (formerly food stamps).
· Up to $125 billion in cuts to Pell Grants.
· More than $16 billion from eliminating the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG).
· At least $150 billion in cuts in unspecified mandatory programs serving low-income Americans.
· About $160 billion, and maybe more, in cuts to low-income non-defense discretionary (NDD) programs.
In March of this year, Ryan met with Vulture Capitalist Paul Singer and other Republican donors to set the Republican Agenda for the upcoming year. According to Politico the secretive two-day conclave headed by hedge-fund manager Paul Singer called the “American Opportunity Alliance” included the richest pro-business GOP donors in the country. Activities included panels on economic and security policies.
Paul Singer is one of the hedge-fund managers who stand to
make a killing off the Puerto Rico financial crisis, so it is curious that two
months after that soiree Ryan and the GOP unveil their plan to “save” Puerto
Rico. From The Nation:
Excerpt:
No, Paul Ryan, Austerity Will Not Fix the Starving Puerto Rican Economy
House Republicans want to let an unelected “control board” impose brutal
cuts on people who have already suffered enough.
Led by House Speaker Paul Ryan …
they have promoted the worst sort of austerity economics (tax breaks for billionaires in combination with proposals to undermine Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
food stamps, and unemployment benefits)… the folly of austerity is
confirmed each day—in states governed by Republican governors who seek to balance budgets by assaulting public
employees, public education, and public services…
Ryan and his fellow Republicans
have been cobbling together a legislative proposal to create an unelected control board that could trump the will of the
people of Puerto Rico and impose
draconian cuts. That’s a recipe for economic and social turmoil… “This undemocratic board would have the power
to slash pensions, cut education and
health care, and increase taxes on working families in Puerto Rico…
The White House complains about the “mean spirited policy-making”
of the Republicans who have advanced this measure. Yet aides say the president (and many congressional
Democrats) could accept the plan if there is no other option for assisting
Puerto Rico.
Paul Ryan has served his financial benefactor well. And as Paul Ryan and his bloody band of
financial terrorists serve Puerto Rico up on a platter to the vultures, Ryan
cohort Jeb Hensarling is heading up the effort to derail the Dodd-Frank Act and
dismantle the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau. Undoing
Dodd-Frank happens to be another item on the Paul Singer wish list. From Trailblazers blog:
Excerpt:
Dallas Rep. Jeb Hensarling to push for fewer restrictions on banks in
Dodd-Frank overhaul
With his Financial Choice Act, the
Texas Republican wants to do away with
the Volcker Rule, which restricts a bank’s ability to make risky speculative investments; increase
congressional oversight of independent regulatory agencies; exempt banks with
certain capital levels from parts of the law and slap heftier fines on banks
for fraud and other financial misconduct…
Hensarling — one of seven powerful
House committee chairmen from Texas – has tried for years to chip away at the
measure, which was passed in the wake of
the housing crisis and is aimed at increasing oversight of the nation’s most powerful banks…
Hensarling wants to rename the
consumer protection bureau and place it under the control of a bipartisan, five-member commission —
instead of a single director…
The presumptive Democratic candidate for President, Hillary Clinton
has the only viable plan to address the Federal Reserve Bank and Wall Street Banks. According to Michael Maiello at Rolling Stone Magazine:
Excerpt:
Why It's a Big Deal Hillary Clinton Plans to Shake Up the Fed
Clinton has a chance to achieve
radical, lasting financial reform
Hillary Clinton is taking on the United States Federal Reserve System,
but in a wonky, bottom's-up way that shows her understanding of a complex and
widely misunderstood organization. This is not "End the Fed" or even
"audit the Fed" — she wants to rebuild it from its fundamentals at
the regional level.
Hillary Clinton's recent proposal
to change the roster of Fed officials who ultimately make monetary policy and
regulatory decisions might be the most
effective Fed-reform idea since the financial crisis… The Federal Reserve was set up in 1917,
in the wake of a financial crisis, as a
private national bank that could serve as lender of last resort to other
banks…
The Fed is run by a seven-member
board in Washington, D.C., and a dozen regional bank presidents based in
financial centers throughout the country (New York, St. Louis, Kansas City and
Cleveland, among others). While the crew
in D.C. is selected by the president and vetted by Congress, the regional bank presidents are chosen by the
financial industry and tend to be either bankers or career Fed employees…
Clinton's proposal would remove bankers from the regional boards
of directors. Those boards choose
the regional presidents and generate
most of the information and perspective that the Federal Reserve governors use to set monetary policy. Clinton
clearly understands how the Fed functions…
Most people do not know that they
are staffed with chief executives from Morgan Stanley, Comerica, KeyCorp and
private-equity firms like Silver Lake, and if they do know it, they do not
understand its importance.
The idea that the Fed often acts contrary to the interests of working people is
not new, but aside from requiring the Fed to pursue full employment in addition
to price stability in 1977, presidents who are unhappy with the Fed have done
little more than complain… Clinton is
digging deeper. Changing the roster of the regional boards will hopefully help
more accurate economic information trickle up to the chairperson and the
federal governors.
In her quiet way, tinkering with
the inner workings of a near-century old quasi-government institution that is
arcane to most, Clinton has a chance to
achieve radical, lasting financial reform.
Last night Hillary Clinton secured enough delegates to
become the Democratic nominee for President, but will the Reagan Democrats allow
her to become the nominee? In 2008 Joe
Biden, Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy colluded to steal the nomination from
Clinton, who would have reigned in the Wall Street banks. The Obama Administration and the Federal
Reserve Bank instead bailed out the Wall Street banks to the tune of over $43
trillion dollars.
According to Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone Magazine, the
Obama/Biden Administration is hiding 11,000 documents of information about the
financial meltdown of 2008 from the American public.
Excerpt:
Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?
The "most transparent
administration in history" has spent years trying to hide embarrassing
financial secrets from the public
For years now, the federal
government has been quietly fighting to keep a lid on an 11,000-document cache
of government communications relating to financial policy. The sheer breadth of
the effort to keep this material secret
may not have a precedent in modern presidential times… The Obama administration invoked executive
privilege, attorney-client and deliberative process over these documents and
insisted that their release would negatively impact global financial markets…
But in finally unsealing some of
these materials last week, a federal judge named Margaret Sweeney said the government's sole motivation was avoiding
embarrassment… So what's so
embarrassing? Mainly, it's a sordid history of the government's seizure of
mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, also known as the
government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs…
After 2008, everyone hated Fannie
and Freddie, and for good reason. These quasi-private companies are essentially
giant piles of money that were intended to advance a simple, utility-like
mandate to keep credit flowing in the housing markets…. Contrary to popular
belief, the one thing they weren't guilty of was causing the 2008 crash… As early as March of 2008, then Treasury
Secretary Hank Paulson was advocating using Fannie and Freddie to "buy more mortgage-backed securities
from overburdened banks."
Even after the state took over the
companies in September of 2008, Fannie and Freddie continued to buy as much as $40 billion in bad assets
per month from the private sector. Fannie and Freddie weren't just bailed
out, they were themselves a bailout,
used to sponge up the sins of private firms.
In exchange, the state received an 80 percent stake and the promise of a
future dividend. All told, the government ended up pumping about $187 billion
into the companies.
But now here's the strange part.
Within a few years after the crash, the housing markets improved significantly,
to the point where Fannie and Freddie
started to make money again. Lots of money. The GSEs became cash cows again, and in 2012 the government
unilaterally changed the terms of the bailout…
Now, instead of taking a 10 percent dividend, the government decided
that the new number it preferred was 100 percent.
In court filings later on, the government offered a strange excuse
for this sudden and dramatic change in the bailout terms. It explained that at
the time, the GSEs "faced enormous
credit losses" and "found themselves in a death spiral…" It absolutely denied any foreknowledge
that the firms were on the verge of massive profitability.
It got weirder. Despite the fact that the GSEs went on
to pay the government $228 billion over the next three years, or $40
billion more than they owed, NONE OF
THAT MONEY WENT TO PAYING OFF FANNIE AND FREDDIE'S DEBT…
This was not a debt that could be
paid back. Like a restaurant owner who borrows money from a mobster, the GSEs
found themselves in an unseverable relationship… Then and now, government officials lied about
what they were doing, and why… Many of
the government officials who were
involved in the decisions surrounding the GSE conservatorship are now in the private sector, working
on proposals for much-anticipated GSE reform.
Without getting too deeply into the
weeds of this even more complicated tale, government
officials have been working with Wall Street lobbyists for years on a plan
to have a consortium of private banking
interests step into the shoes of Fannie and Freddie.
Bingo, Fannie and Freddie are cash cows and the Obama/Biden
Administration are colluding with Paul Ryan and the GOP financial terrorists to
privatize the profits of Fannie and Freddie.
And there are a whole slew of financially devastating acts against the
American people that are planned for after the November election during the
lame duck session of congress.
So, stand by and wait and see if the Obama Administration
will allow Hillary Clinton to go forward and run for President or if she will
be indicted on trumped up charges by Republican FBI Director James Comey. Comey who served in the George W. Bush Administration
was also on the board of directors of the London based HSBC Bank that was fined
for laundering money for terrorists. In
the meantime the deadly legacy of Obama, Biden, Paul Ryan and GOP financial terrorists’
of gutting social programs and bankrupting America will continue unabated.
By Patricia Baeten
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