Disagree - the Feds created the cheap money environment of exessive debt which created the asset bubble. Banks were pressured to lend, corruption followed. Is Congress addressing any real reform? No, because like the public option in health care, democrats are determined not to fix the problem but tax the problem.
Some of the situations could be fixed just by raising the capital requiremnts of banks.

This is a little off topic but aircraft loaded and flown from the US full of supplies ( water, food, and basic medical supplies) should have been air dropped by day 2. It just takes too much time to run all that through one airport and then distribute. The military ended up doing that anyway.

As for the OP, the US is always first in aid but last in respect.

The Feds are Sane???

Alan Greenspans and the subsequent Feds low interest rate policy is to blame for the subprime crisis and the recession. That's why lenders were able to extend credit to people and businesses with too poor of financial abilities to pay the loans back as the economy collapsed. The low borrowing rates attracted multitiudes of customers as housing prices soared due to demand. Low interest rates allowed too many to take more risks. Market appreciated equity compounded the issue by making more easy credit available. Alan Greenspan and the Feds are responsible for starting and feeding the vicious cycle, not Wall Street.

Erroll Southers, Obama's nominee for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) withdrew today 1/20/10.

Southers, of course, blamed the Republicans. Yeah, it probably had nothing to do with future policy questions or the possible illegal database searches.

"Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina had placed a block on the nomination, saying he feared that Mr. Southers would attempt to grant collective bargaining rights to tens of thousands of the agency’s employees, including the 45,000 security screeners who have become a familiar presence at the nation’s airports."

"Questions also surfaced about a censure that Mr. Southers received from F.B.I. superiors 20 years ago over a background check run on the boyfriend of his estranged wife. Last October, Mr. Southers told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that he had asked a San Diego police employee to run a single check. But a day later, he acknowledged that he himself had twice conducted database searches."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/us/politics/21southers.html?ref=us

Message was Clear.....

It is not about benefits - it about taxing two identical workers(one union and one non union) the same. This bill does not do that. It gives preferential tax treatment to union workers. Why?

How is that Johnny's fault? No, this is no way a compromise....it is a giveaway to unions at the expense of non union workers.

I really didn't have to read any further than your first sentence. How is Bill's situation in the union Johnny's fault? We are not talking about benefits - we are talking about fair and equal tax treatment for all Americans. It is not Johnny's fault that Bill is in the union and must abide by union rules.

Phony Fruits in the Obama White House Garden
Michelle Malkin
Fri Jan 15, 3:00 am ET

Hold on to your hoe. It turns out that the fruits and veggies used in a special edition of the popular Food Network TV show “Iron Chef America” featuring first lady Michelle Obama did not, in fact, come from the White House garden. Could there be a more deliciously fitting symbol of Obama White House fakery than Garden-Gate?

Some may shrug at this tempest in a colander. But as we approach the one-year anniversary of the Hope and Change inauguration, the first lady's little horticultural hoax serves as a handy metaphor for a cornucopia of Obama fraud. They've stocked health care town halls with partisan goons and benefactors. They've provided lab coats to doctor donors to make their health care lobbying look more authentic. And they've treated soldiers, in President Obama's own words, as “pretty good photo ops.”

Ringers are what's for breakfast, lunch and dinner at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

East Wing apologists are whirling like KitchenAid salad spinners over the Iron Chef-fuffle: "Due to the production delay between the shoot at the White House and the shoot at Food Network, the produce used in Kitchen Stadium during the 'Super Chef Battle' was not actually from the White House garden," admitted a Food Network spokeswoman. But, they stress, the replacement produce consisted of the exact same types of sweet potatoes, tomatillos, broccoli and fennel purportedly picked from the White House garden.

It's the haute cuisine version of disgraced CBS News fabricator Dan Rather's fake-but-accurate card. But this is just the latest Potemkin produce from a Potemkin presidency.

To wit: White House number-crunchers and Democratic fuzzy mathematicians have been cooking the books on stimulus jobs numbers and government health care takeover costs. They desperately ditched the “jobs saved or created” recipe for a jobs-funded concoction to salvage the illusion of economic recovery. They've inflated deficit reduction estimates and downplayed doctor reimbursement cuts. And they've done so behind a locked kitchen door.

Candidate Obama whipped up a nutritious package of transparency pledges that has fallen flatter than a one-egg souffle. Open government, he told us, was good for Washington and good for America — and the president promised to give us heaping doses of it on C-SPAN. But not a camera was in sight for the past week's backroom health care negotiations among the White House, Democratic leaders and left-wing special interests.

Now, President Obama is poised to deliver juicy tax exemptions for unions while squeezing middle-class taxpayers, employers, investors and drugmakers to subsidize expanded government health care.

The liberal press became unhinged when former President George W. Bush posed with an artificial turkey on a surprise Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad in 2003. But on Thursday, when Obama served up a fake populist turkey of a $90 billion bank tax — dubbed the “financial crisis responsibility fee” — much of the press corps dutifully chewed and swallowed. Feigning outrage at the very financial sector that loaded his campaign coffers and provided him with crony Treasury appointees, Obama demanded “our money” back.

But the tax will not apply to the Enron-rivaling financial black holes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (it would “not be productive,” says a White House filled with Fannie- and Freddie-enriched advisers). Or to the bailed-out auto companies. Or to the bevy of non-banks that have soaked up taxpayer bailout money. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

Nor will any of the incompetent or complicit financial regulators who practiced self-admittedly “inadequate” oversight before the meltdown and during the government bailout structuring be fined or penalized. (We're looking at you, Tim Geithner).

With Year Two of the Obama administration barely under way, even its most loyal subjects are beginning to realize that Hope and Change were phony fruits. He promised new politics. We got the same old crony capitalism. He promised public accountability. We got the back of the hand. How ya like them rotten apples now?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20100115/cm_uc_crmmax/op_1912637

Mr President....why is Bill special? We have basicaly the same job, the same wages, the same healthcare plans. So the presidents says, Why Johnnie, Bill belongs to a union and you don't. You have to pay for that.

Even a child could understand this one.....

a resounding "NO"

Go ahead....laugh it off....Change that Democrats can really believe in.... is coming...

Compromise???....more like corruption ....continues behind close doors for special interest.

Ha Ha Ha....well it won't to most Americans...you will see!!!

By CARL CAMPANILE

January 15, 2010

Big Labor got some big love from President Obama and congressional Democrats yesterday after they agreed to exempt union workers from the whopping “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health-care plans until 2018
The sweetheart deal, hammered out behind closed doors, will save union employees at least $60 billion over the years involved, while others won't be as lucky -- they'll have to cough up almost $90 billion. The 40 percent excise tax on what have come to be called "Cadillac" health-care plans would exempt collective-bargaining contracts covering government employees and other union members until Jan. 1, 2018.

In another major concession to labor, the value of dental and vision plans would be exempt from the tax even after the deal expires in eight years, negotiators said.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/unions_get_pecial_treatment_in_health_AB053CwqPIJlIxXAm37DOM

Americans will REVOLT over this one!!! Union workers pay no tax for eight years and get dental and vision exemption forever.

Why are unions and government workers more special than those who aren't?

Too bad the government didn't allow more Lehman lessons so some people could figure it out. If Bank of America or Citigroup had been allowed to go under, most Americans would be unemployed.

How about the dems wake up and realize that this bill will only pass because senators votes have been bought, that some states get preferential funding over other states, that they have to give unions special exemptions, and that forcing someone to buy health insurance would cause George Washington to go bald.

Your questions above aren't relevant unless you can show that say Baptist get preferential tax treatment over say Methodist.

I think you and the dems have forgot that this is supposed to be a NATIONAL HEALTHCARE BILL for ALL Americans.....there is no way that unions should get a "special deal or exemption" on a health care tax over non union Americans. We are talking about Americans being fairly taxed here, not negotiating for benefits.

Why not levy a 20 % tax on all current and future Senators and House of Representatives for repealing the Glass-Steagall act.

How is forcing banks that were not involved to "pay for the bailout" fair? How is forcing banks to cover the auto's part of the bailout fair? Seems to me good old American values are somewhat skewered under Obama.... I'm going to get that money back from someone.

Businesses aren't stupid....cost go up....consumers PAY. Is this tax going to help improve unemployment?

This chart show what happened once Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act....



How much of the banks debt is at 30%? It's a drop in the bucket when you consider all the home loans, commercial loans, etc. So maybe when the banks raise your home loan to 30% you will have a valid argument as to chargin the banks 30% for bailout monies that many have paid back. What about the banks that were forced to take the bailout monies? Now here is the killer - How in the world, if the banks were in such bad shape did they manage to pay most of the bailout money back so quickly?

Banks are just enemy # 1 now for the American people...kinda like the oil companies were shortly ago...Obama goes after the banks...oh my, all of a sudden he's more popular....

So who is really to blame? Congress and the Feds keeping interest rates too low.