Via U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen’s campaign just now as President Obama signed the Wall Street reform bill into law:
Everett, WA - Today, Rep. Rick Larsen was present at the signing of legislation permanently ending the era of Too Big To Fail and creating common sense regulations for Wall Street that provide unprecedented protections for families and small businesses in Northwest Washington.Rep. Larsen
“Giving Wall Street Reform the force of law is a critical moment for everyone in Northwest Washington who thinks financial security for families and small businesses should come before bailouts and bonuses for the big banks on Wall Street,” Brooke Davis, Spokesperson for Congressman Larsen said. “Rick Larsen thinks this is a badly needed step forward, John Koster thinks things are working just fine.”
Koster’s silence puts him firmly in support of a status quo supported by his Party’s leadership, an ideological position that helped create the worst economic crisis since the great Depression.
Consider:
• Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), the Republican who guides the GOP agenda in Washington, DC, called for the legislation’s repeal before it was even voted on;
• Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), Chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), a group that has featured Koster’s candidacy in their “Young Guns” program, has vehemently spoken in opposition to Wall Street reform.
• Every Member of Congress who has endorsed Koster voted against the legislation: Reps. Reichert (R-WA), Hastings (R-WA), Culberson (R-TX), McCarthy (R-CA), and Walden (R-OR);
• Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Koster’s most high profile endorsement, said, “Government should not burden the market with unnecessary bureaucracy and distorted incentives, nor make a dangerous ‘Too-Big-To-Fail’ mentality the law of the land.”; and
• The legislation is opposed by Dino Rossi and his two most prominent Republican rivals in the GOP primary for Washington’s Senate seat.Nearly 100,000 people in Northwest Washington lost their homes or retirement savings because big Wall Street banks played with their futures by selling risky financial products. Small businesses have been forced to shut their doors because these big banks put big profits and big bonuses before fiscal sanity.
“For voters looking for a clear choice this November, today presents a stark contrast,” Davis said. “Rick Larsen stood with hardworking families and small businesses who need help because Wall Street has gotten away with too much for too long, and his opponent stood silent.”
July 21st, 2010 at 9:36 AM
Thank you very much Rick:
Financial regulators, white-collar criminologists, and economists all agree that perverse incentive structures cause crises and they agree that the finance industry’s incentive structures have long been perverse.
The Obama administration asserts that the financial reform bill the President will sign into law this week will prevent future crises. In fact, it will fail to do so because it does not effectively address those perverse incentives. Indeed, it increases the likelihood of the accounting scams that are the very reason why perverse incentives pay.
Over time, crises have gotten more severe because many reform policies have the unintended consequence of encouraging these types of incentive structures.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/18/news/economy/finreg_law_incentives_bill-black.fortune/index.htm
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
July 21st, 2010 at 10:08 AM
Rick Larsen is not ‘Too Big to Fail’ in this election!
I’m voting for Larry Kalb because Larry wants to bring American jobs back to Americans.
Rick doesn’t.
Larry wants to see ‘Made in America’ stamped on American products.
Rick didn’t.
Larry believes American products should be Made in America, By Americans, and For Americans.
Rick doesn’t. Even when Rick rips off Larry’s campaign premise for ‘Made in America’ products (yes, Rick, the voters have noticed) he doesn’t.
Larry, Larry!
Makes his stand,
for American products
Made on American Land!
(sorry.)
July 21st, 2010 at 7:06 PM
At least in being silent, Koster is not exaggerating like Larsen is.
Don’t believe for a second that this legislation accomplishes “permanently ending the era of Too Big To Fail”. This legislation did not limit the size of the bank’s or their percentage of the GNP.
The large banks need to be broken up into smaller Regional ones a la the AT & T break up years ago. They are still too big and therefore too big to fail without taking the country down with them. The extralegal Fed would never allow it. This legislation accomplishes some important things, but unfiortunately not the end of the too big to fail era.
July 21st, 2010 at 8:56 PM
Fighting against the tide of certain industries outsourcing jobs overseas would be tantamount to fighting against the decline of cottage industries during the start of the Industrial Revolution. And just as pointless, if not downright counter-productive.
You want to try and compete against India to attract call centers? Against Taiwan and, increasingly, Malaysia, for printed circuit board manufacturers? Against China, for simple toggle switches and McDonald’s toys? What would it accomplish? We’d have people living in a rich, expensive country trying to make ends meet on a third world salary.
It would be better and more constructive in the long run to try and attract jobs that require more than just the cheapest labor to do business on a global scale, than to fight against globalization and compete with third world countries on labor costs alone.
July 21st, 2010 at 10:49 PM
“Fighting against the tide of certain industries outsourcing jobs overseas would be tantamount to fighting against the decline of cottage industries during the start of the Industrial Revolution.” NOT TRUE! This is not the way we want to live. This philosophy would create a two class system. Richest and poorest! Look what our trade policies have done to other countries we have entered into, Mexico for example. There is an exponentially larger immigration issues because of globalization. It’s now happening here at home. It is an economic war on the American worker. Regan, Bush and Clinton put us on this road so suck it up you party faithful! You have been screwed and a little research on your part will prove my points!
“We’d have people living in a rich, expensive country trying to make ends meet on a third world salary.” We are already doing this and it’s going to get worse! I would like to see some serious suggestions on what kind of jobs that would require more than the cheapest labor that could employ even close to the number of people of the job pool in this country. I think it’s crazy to think that we could improve much less stop the decline of a decent standard of living in this country without reindustrializing. It’s going to be hard to bite this bullet but Americans better figure out they have be sold down the river by the private sector and it’s lapdog politicians. It must be done soon because as we speak the country continues to be dumbed down by the likes of the Fox Propaganda network and the private sector lobbyists liars Oh and don’t forget the big push to defund education in this country by the Republicans for the most part.
This idea of “You can’t fight globalization” Is a load! As a country we can make the changes we need if we get tough on congress and replace these corporate shills who have been bought and paid for. Trade policies can be changed. Import rules, tariffs, and taxes can be changed. Nationalize any industries which are vital to our security.
But if people want to continue to promote the private sector lies then I guess they get what they deserve.
I would also like to point out because of the incredible mount of lies which corporate media, and Fox network spams everyone with through blogs, board posters, ads and emails
makes these people who forward and echo the garbage Liars just as much the originators of these lies
Have at it suckers!
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:35 AM
America started selling the over seas jobs in the early 70’s. Nixon’s China summit’s cemented the deals. Sadly we are now feeling the major effects of the political paid for times by the major players in buying public policy.
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:43 AM
Sigh. Larsen finds it hard to speak without lying, sometimes. This is one of those times.
Larsen says: “a status quo supported by his Party’s leadership”
But he provides NO evidence of the GOP leadership supporting the status quo.
Larsen says, “an ideological position that helped create the worst economic crisis since the great Depression.”
Larsen provides — as no one else ever has, including Obama — any examples of how this “position” contributed significantly to the recession.
Going through Larsen’s points, it is clear that every example he gives of Republicans being supposedly supporting the status quo is actually an example of Republicans opposing this bill. To me, this is extraordinarily sick: to think that the only possible ways of doing things are YOUR way, or the status quo.
In fact, Obama himself decried this sort of false dichotomy in his book “Audacity of Hope.” It’s fundamentally dishonest and damaging.
The fact is, the Republicans do not support the status quo, and do support reform, but also do not support the Democrats’ vision of government control, which is actually about half of what got us here: the persistent belief that government can prevent problems by just controlling things more, and more, and more. We thought we were safe because we thought we had enough control … until we found out we didn’t have the control we thought. It is this reliance on government control that is the problem, that causes most of our booms and the inevitable busts to follow, which are — as Palin remarked — the result of perverse incentives.
(The other half of what got us there was ignoring the warning signs, which both parties are to blame for to some degree, but obviously, the Democrats did everything they could to block fixing FNMA etc., even claiming that people who thought it needed to be fixed were racists.)
Nearly 100,000 people in Northwest Washington lost their homes or retirement savings because big Wall Street banks played with their futures by selling risky financial products.
And NO ONE thinks the banks should be able to continue to sell such products. If the bill just said “banks can’t do that anymore,” they would get near-unanimous support. Of course, Larsen is lying: the reason Republicans oppose it have nothing to do with selling those products.
July 22nd, 2010 at 10:00 AM
[...] previously had been criticized by Rep. Larsen’s campaign for not having issued any kind of statement for or against the reform [...]