Posted on 07/19/2013 4:35:30 PM PDT by lbryce
Earlier this week, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) went on CNBC last Friday to debate the Glass-Steagall banking regulations that were adopted in 1933, and her proposal to update and strengthen the law in a way that would likely force the big banks to spin off some of their business and stop being so damn big.
As you can imagine, CNBC is no fan of Glass Steagall, regulating banks, or Elizabeth Warren.
During her appearance on CNBC, Warren basically kicked ass, the video went viral, with over 700,000 views in a matter of days, so CNBC pulled it.
Here’s what sits in place of the video now:
Blank Screen
And where did CNBC pull the video from? They filed a complaint with YouTube and had the video yanked from the Senator’s official YouTube account - but only after it had accumulated over 700,000 views in a matter of days.
Apparently, the buzz over Warren’s appearance got so great, that CNBC anchor Jim Cramer had to try to shoot it down on Twitter (h/t to HuffPo for that point):
There is some weird strain of thought that CNBC got beaten by Senator Warren. I like the senator but she had NO impact. Sorry..
— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) July 17, 2013
Yeah, Elizabeth Warren had so little impact that CNBC filed a complaint against the YouTube account of a United States Senator in order to get the no-impact video pulled.
(Excerpt) Read more at americablog.com ...
Under Glass-Steagall, major investment banks such as Drexel Burnham and Salomon Brothers failed without creating serious contagion in the broader economy.Drexel-Burnham failed because it was engaged in criminal activity, not because it did risky investments.
Salamon Brothers didn't fail. It was bought out.
But in the post-Glass Steagall world of the 2008 crisis, the failure of investment banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman threatened the entire economy.It wasn't those failures that threatened the economy. It was the freezing of liquidity. And neither of those banks actually had full banking; if they had had large commercial components, they would have had the liquidity to survive, as others did.
The point isn't whether some changes that might be similar to parts of glass-seagal would be useful; her arguments were simply silly.
Yes, I agree with him. It was an attractive idea, to have a one stop financial shop. Also the holding companies were kinda getting around some of the rules. Still, in retrospect, I don’t think it turned out to be a good thing.
Thanks CharlesWayneCT.
What’s Fauxahontas’ FR nick?
Annoyingly, I can’t find a full transcript of her comments, and I’m not listening to the video again and again to try to get it.
There’s another place where she claims that her bill will prevent all boom-and-bust cycles, and keep all banks from ever going bankrupt again.
How so?
Because I would like to limit the amount of government funds that banks can grab from taxpayers through bailouts. The FDIC was initiated in the Great Depression to boost confidence in the banking system by guaranteeing regular citizen's customer deposits. Glass-Steagall was also implemented around the same time to separate retail banking, in which the FDIC guarantees, from commercial banking. Banks would have to absorb the losses themselves from commercial banking activity that went bad. This protected ordinary citizens from the excess risk taking of the banks pretty well.
When Glass-Steagall was repealed, retail and commercial banks began to combine, and engage in more risky activity, especially when interest rates kept going down. The line between what the government was obligated to support became cloudy, as in 2008. In order to protect the consumers, the government got conned into bailing out the whole banking system.
We are not going to get rid of FDIC insurance, but I would like to reduce the government's exposure, (and therefore my exposure as a taxpayer), to the bank's risky trading activity. Separating retail banking under FDIC coverage from speculative trading would help that.
If this doesn't happen, the FDIC is not big enough to bail out the banks, and we are not going to pass another 800 billion TARP program to bail out the banks. What would happen is what did happen in Cypress, a bail-in. This would mean that all deposits would be confiscated and turned into the bank's equity, i.e. stock, at a very low rate of conversion. Depositors would be wiped out. This isn't speculation, the US and Europe have published documents stating that this is the plan for another 2008 style meltdown.
That comes to what, 0.0001% of the time?
Here’s an idea: in order to get banks to not make risky loans, don’t force them to do so.
There are huge problems with her analysis though.
The recent bank failures weren’t caused by less regulation, they were caused because the equal lending laws that forced banks to consider bad loan prospects or be sued for discrimination.
When the banks were forced to relax standards by law, the average consumer simply jumped on the band wagon. By the time they were done, over one fifth the housing market were financed with loans that artificially inflated housing prices and consumers that had no business taking out those loans.
People like our president organized against the banks and helped create the mess while consistently saying there was no crisis. Let’s look back on this politicians views on these loans at the time. Bet she said the same as Obama, Clinton, and the leading democRATs who were on the committees who pushed these loans on the banks.
Now she’s for more regulation. Total crap.
That’s awesome, but investment banking didn’t cause the crisis. Glass-Steagall didn’t prevent bad mortgages. Wouldn’t have prevented the crisis.
My point was that the government has no business manipulating the economy, period.
The government should do its job in enforcing laws that create a lawful, just playing field.
When the government starts writing laws to favor one over another, corruption occurs....i.e control, manipulation, favor and power to the highest bidder.
When you agree with the high cheekbone one, do you really believe she has Americas interest at heart or is she just playing economic manipulation games...or is she trying to get elected to the power center and prestige of DC?
Elizabeth Warren’s bill will eliminate the business cycle (and the government’s influence upon it). A Freeper will post a thread in support of her bill, presently. Stay tuned.
We don’t need more regulation, we need more accountability. Had we allowed these giant banks to fail this long nightmare would be over by now and the giant banks would be gone for a generation or more!
Now.
Unless it stops bad loans, separating them wouldn't prevent another crisis.
Chief "Crapping Eagle".
High speed rail, it’s the only thing that can save us.
Reminds me of that “How to Do It” sketch from Monty Python.
Obama has been shutting down smaller banks - deposits migrate to bigger ones until we have a handful that is easier for the gov to control
Thanks.
Of course I haven’t seen her reference to it, but I’m not sure the cause of Drexel’s downfall makes much difference for her argument. If Salomon was a forced solvency sale, I certainly wasn’t aware of it, or at least I don’t remember it that way—it was a ways back! I see the Salomon reference was part of the Senators’ official statement on their bill, so I presume there was something to it.
It wasn’t the large commercial components that saved the commercial banks, however, as their access to bailout funds from the Fed—which is why the last big surviving investment banks made such last minute conversions in order to get that relief themselves, IIRC.
I don’t know how abrupt or how phased their bill is, but something G-S-like is one of the best ways I know to limit the risk to the system—and to taxpayers.
Doesn’t really surprise me if she made silly statements. Saying a G-S return would take away all risk or failures is a silly level of oversell.
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