Wall Street Makes A Move-- With Corrupt Conservatives From Both Parties On Board

Happy Anniversary? This year it will be one full decade since the Wall Street meltdown-- triggered by greed-driven, irresponsible banksters and the politicians who allowed them (for a regular flow of bribes) to get away with murder-- that threw the economy into the Great Recession. Austin Frerick is running for an Iowa congressional seat occupied by a garden variety corrupt conservative incumbent, Wall Street ally David Young. Austin isn't beating around the bush when he discusses Young's lock-step subservience to the banksters, who have done so much damage in southwest Iowa. "How sad is this reality. I don't even bother to first look at Congressman Young's website anymore for his position on things. I just look at a list of his donors. It's an easier way to figure out his position on things I've learned. In 2017, he took $4,500 from Wells Fargo so there's your answer and another example of the Congressman putting corporate America ahead of working Americans." Can you imagine what would have happened had we had as incompetent a bunch of imbeciles then as we have now with the Trump Regime? Well... you may not have to imagine-- and it won't just be the fault of the Republicans this time. Let me start with two lists of senators:

• Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
• Joe Donnelly (D-IN)
• Jon Tester (D-MT)
• Mark Warner (D-VA)
• Tim Kaine (D-VA)
• Chris Coons (D-DE)
• Tom Carper (D-DE)
• Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
• Joe Manchin (D-WV)
• Gary Peters (D-MI)
• Michael Bennet (D-CO)
• Doug Jones (D-AL)
• Angus King (I-ME)

Those are the senators who have already vowed to cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans to give the banksters the power to rip off consumers and crash the system again. Below are the Democratic senators who say they are still "on the fence."

• Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
• Bill Nelson (D-FL)
• Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
• Chris Murphy (D-CT)
• Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)
• Maggie Hassan (D-NH)
• Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

What does Elizabeth Warren think about this? She boiling-- albeit mostly quietly. (The bolding was hers, not mine) Mostly-- but not entirely. "In 2008, Wall Street’s reckless greed crashed our economy," she reminded Massachusetts voters yesterday. "While millions of hard-working people lost their jobs, their homes, and their life savings, the big banks got a $700 billion no-strings-attached bailout from the American taxpayers. A bailout and nobody went to jail for causing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. After the crash, Congress passed legislation called Dodd-Frank, which put new rules in place for the biggest financial institutions to stop another crisis and taxpayer bailout. But now, less than a decade later, Senate Republicans-- and some Senate Democrats-- are getting ready to gut a lot of those rules for some of the country’s biggest banks. The bank lobbyists have been hitting Capitol Hill hard, and they have a Dodd-Frank rollback bill lined up with the support of every Republican and twelve Democrats. We need to make some noise about this big wet kiss to the big banks by reminding Senators as loudly as possible: they work for the American people, not for big bank lobbyists."

...Dodd-Frank said that every bank with more than $50 billion in assets-- that’s roughly the 40 biggest banks, or the top 0.5% of all banks by size-- would have tougher rules than smaller banks. That means mandatory stress tests to analyze how they would react to another financial crisis and plans for how they would break apart, sell off assets, and liquidate in bankruptcy if they started to fail.



There’s a reason for this common-sense oversight of big banks: They are so big that they could potentially bring down the whole economy again if they failed and taxpayers didn’t bail them out again.



The bill that could be up in the Senate in the next few weeks would let almost 30 of the 40 biggest banks in the country could go back to looser rules like the ones that let them run wild before the 2008 crisis.


 What could possibly go wrong?!?



The big bank lobbyists want you to believe that this bill is protecting poor little mom and pop banks from getting buried under red tape. But this bill is aimed at helping the big guys. These 30 banks got nearly $50 billion in taxpayer bailouts during the 2008 crisis.

And remember Countrywide? It was at the heart of the financial crisis. At its peak, Countrywide was financing one out of every five mortgages in the country. It was a major player in blowing up the economy. You know how big Countrywide was when it was leading the toxic mortgages that blew up our economy? About $200 billion-- smaller than some of the banks that would be turned loose by this bill.



Let’s be clear: Banks of all sizes are making record profits right now. And if that wasn’t enough, the Republican tax bill just gave away billions to the big banks. They are swimming in money. There is no reason at all to roll back the rules on these big banks so they can pad their pockets even more-- and cut them loose to take on wild risks again.



The American people-- Democrats, Republicans, and Independents-- want tougher rules on big banks, not weaker ones. It’s time to hold Republican AND Democratic Senators who support this bill accountable for siding with their big bank donors instead of working families.



I get it: Wall Street has money and power. But there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The only way to slow down this Bank Lobbyist Act is if we speak out and fight back... The big banks will do anything they can to pass this dangerous bill into law. We need you out there giving everything you’ve got.

It's not easy for a senator to attack members of her own party. Candidates for Congress may be reluctant to do it as well, but we asked some of the Blue America-endorsed candidates. Orange County progressive Sam Jammal was up early this morning tweeting about it and I asked him to expand on his comments. He was happy to: "Congress is once again reverting back to its old ways of being a body by and for the big banks," he told us. "The Senate is now attempting to roll back policies explicitly put in place to avoid another financial meltdown. This is just plain stupid. These rules were put in place to stop another crisis. You don't get rid of them because they have been working so well that we haven't had another financial crisis, so they are no longer needed. This is like going on a diet and then once you lose all the weight you needed to lose, you declare you are fit and revert back to a hamburger every day since the original diet worked and is no longer needed."

Same for Tim Canova, the south Florida progressive going top against Wall Street ally Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He's worked for years on this program and pointed out that "Giant regional banks are trying to mischaracterize this bill as an effort to help small banks and rural communities. In reality, this legislation would relax regulatory oversight of dozens of huge banks with more than $50 billion in assets. This may well undermine not just consumer protections, but the safety, soundness, and stability of the financial system. Instead of deregulating big banks, Congress should be creating public banking alternatives, including a national infrastructure bank, to serve the needs of our local communities."

Ellen Lipton, is running for Congress in an open Michigan district. She's not having any of the Republican-lite nonsense: "If there's any issue to take a stand on, and NOT engage in bipartisan hand-holding, it would be this one. The elimination of this regulation would allow an institution like Countrywide off the hook. I served in the Legislature when over 10,000 Michigan homeowners were cheated out of over $120 million dollars because of Countrywide's predatory lending practices. Communities decimated by the actions of these banks are just starting to rebuild after a decade. Since these senators seem to be in such a giving mood, maybe they should think about providing relief to these REAL communities. And calling these mega-corporations 'community banks' does not make them any less culpable or in need of continued oversight."

DuWayne Gregory is the progressive Democrat running for the Long Island South Shore seat occupied by Peter King. He gas his eyes on Republicans, not on the demented Democrats making common cause with them. "The Republicans are at it again," he said today. "This is proof positive that the so called Trump Make America Great Again agenda is all about bringing the country back to perilous times. The time when unscrupulous banks acted carelessly and crashed the economy which lead to turmoil where millions of people lost their jobs and homes. Peter King supported the bailout of Wall Street banks last time while voting against help for the auto industry and there is no doubt he will bail them out again. This attempt brings new meaning to the phrase 'fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.' Republicans in Congress have to be sent a message loudly and clearly their agenda is wrong for America and vote them out this November."

This week Zack Warmbrodt's Politico piece that was behind their pay wall and laid out the parameters of the problem, went public. We've discussed it already... even before was written, bit the mainstream media calls the paid off senators "bipartisan" and the senators who are standing up to fight for Americans and for America as the ones "driving a wedge between Democrats and threatening to magnify the party's divisions as it fights to win back Congress this year." Of course Politico refers to the bribe-happy extremists as "moderates," instead of corrupt conservatives while disparaging "Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown and their activist allies" as "working to undercut the party's centrists before the vote, with several of the moderates" before "tough reelection campaigns this year."

Do voters want banksters to be able to rip them off again? Will that make it easier to win reelection for corrupt conservatives like Heitkamp, McCaskill, Donnelly, and the rest of the Bail-out Caucus? Who feeds this narrative to a gullible, thought-free media? Lobbyists? Over drinks?

UPDATE: A Texas Dem Who Wants To Stop Bankster Fraud

Lillian Salerno, the progressive candidate running in the north Dallas seat held by Wall Street shill Pete Sessions, pointed out that "Rolling back protections crafted specifically to guard against a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis is the wrong way to go. I believe there are ways to ensuring rural communities and entrepreneurs have ample access to credit without exempting financial institutions of up to $250 billion from requirements that are designed to limit systemic risk and guard against another Great Recession. Ten years after the financial crisis, it's smart to take a critical look at what changes have worked, and which ones could use an update, but citizens know the difference between providing small businesses with some flexibility and a giveaway to powerful corporations. The Banks and financial institutions with household names like American Express that this legislation exempts are hardly mom-and-pop shops. I am more concerned with the financial well being of American families, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs, and the stability of the American economy than providing relief to Wall Street."

Heitkamp: "We Have Enough Votes Right Now To Pass It," And By "We" She Means The Corrupt Senators Owned By Wall Street

Looks like I stumbled onto something Saturday-- my use of the term "Bailout Caucus," pissed off some senators. Turns out the polite way of talking about the topic is to refer to the "Bank Lobbyist Act." My bad. The good guys gnash their teeth when rebellious types refer to corrupt right of center Democrats-- many in danger of losing their seats because they are corrupt and right of center-- as the BailoutCaucus: Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Jon Tester (MT), Chris Coons (DE), Tom Carper (DE), Joe Donnelly (IN), Claire McCaskill (MO), Gary Peters (MI), Mark Warner (VA), Tim Kaine (VA), Joe Manchin (WV) and Michael Bennet (CO) + independent Angus King (ME).

We'll leave that aside for a moment and go over what NPR reported, a report you can listen to at the top of the page about how the Trump Regime and their Republican allies in Congress are in the process of destroying the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Trump's interim head of the bureau, corrupt anti-regulation fanatic Mick Mulvaney has been trying to make "radical changes to deter the agency from aggressively pursuing its mission."

The CFPB on Monday unveiled a new strategic plan to that end. In a message accompanying the plan for the years 2018 through 2022, Mulvaney wrote, "we have committed to fulfill the Bureau's statutory responsibilities, but go no further." The plan says the bureau should be "acting with humility and moderation."

This new direction is consistent with Mulvaney's other memos and statements and formalizes his plans for defanging the watchdog bureau and reshaping its mission, according to insiders and experts that NPR has talked to.

The CFPB is considered a powerful and independent watchdog. But many Republicans have wanted to shut it down since Day 1 because they think it's too powerful. Mulvaney is one of them. As a congressman, Mulvaney called the agency a "sick sad joke." He drafted legislation to abolish it. So people at the bureau were shocked when the president appointed him to run this consumer protection agency.

Within weeks of coming on board, Mulvaney has worked to make the watchdog agency less aggressive. Under his leadership, the CFPB delayed a new payday lending regulation from going into effect and dropped an investigation into one payday lender that contributed to Mulvaney's campaign. In another move that particularly upset some staffers, the new boss also dropped a lawsuit against an alleged online loan shark called Golden Valley Lending. The suit says the lender illegally charges people up to 950 percent interest rates. It took CFPB staffers years to build the case.

"People are devastated and angry-- just imagine how you would feel if years of your life had been dedicated to pursuing justice and you lose everything," says Christopher Peterson, a former Office of Enforcement attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who worked on this particular case early on.

Peterson believes that had the lawsuit been pursued and the CFPB won, it could have clawed back money to help thousands of people who have allegedly been hurt by the lender.

...In his new strategic plan and in memos to staff, Mulvaney has made it clear that he wants to rein in the bureau... Some see this as Mulvaney's way of paying back supporters of his campaign.

"As a congressman he took $62,000 plus from the payday lenders. And now at the CFPB he's doing their bidding," says Karl Frisch, executive director of the consumer group Allied Progress... Of course, Mulvaney's moves could be just conservative ideology for less regulation.

Zachary Warmbrodt's report at Politico Pro is behind a paywall (as of Monday morning) and is far more political and far more ominous than NPR's folksy report. "A debate over the biggest bank deregulation bill since the 2008 Wall Street meltdown," he wrote, "is splitting Senate Democrats and threatening to magnify the party's divisions as it fights to win back Congress." He explained that on one side are the corrupt right-wing assholes and cowards like "Heidi Heitkamp and Jon Tester from Republican-leaning states who support the legislation because they say it will provide relief to small and regional banks and boost rural economies. On the other side are progressive Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and their activist allies, who argue that the bill will put consumers at risk and are working to undercut the moderates, several of whom have tough re-election campaigns this year."

That the legislation-- yes the one we referred to above as the "Bank Lobbyist Act"-- is facing a vote in the next few weeks and is coming a decade after the worst credit crunch since the Great Depression has fueled passions around the debate. Elizabeth Warren said that she's "amazed that, on the 10th anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, some Democrats are supporting the Trump administration and Senate Republicans on a bill to roll back the financial rules we put in place." The bill put together by Wall Street lobbyists and Mike Crapo (R-ID), S. 2155, "would scale back regulations that Democrats pushed through in 2010 in the Dodd-Frank Act-- the sweeping statute that rewrote the rules of the financial industry and is one of President Barack Obama's signature achievements." Funny how the lobbyist-fueled lawmakers on both sides of the aisle "say the landmark law should be recalibrated to ease restrictions on lenders, in particular the smallest banks that were not responsible for the worst excesses that led to the crisis. For [corrupt right-wing asshole] Democrats from states that Donald Trump won in 2016, it's a chance to show voters they can work with Republicans and help their local economies. Trump administration officials have been supportive of the Senate legislation."

The infighting isn't expected to take down the bill, which probably has enough support to escape a filibuster, thanks to the 11 Democrats co-sponsoring the legislation. House Republicans, who have proposed more dramatic rollbacks, might pose a bigger hurdle. But the Senate floor debate could have repercussions in this year's elections and beyond, as Democrats try to convince voters they can effectively oversee the economy.

Democrats who oppose the legislation are emboldened by the expectation that most of their caucus will be on their side.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is leading efforts to undermine the bill as the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, said his party is "overwhelmingly against it."

"I've talked to damn near everybody about this," he said.

Brown says the bill's backers are overselling its benefits to the smallest lenders and that easing rules for larger banks would threaten the economy.

The legislation is muddying Democrats' message as they try to take back power in Washington, he said.

"The public doesn't want us to lay down for the banks," he said. "The public doesn't have collective amnesia about what happened 10 years ago like senators do."

...Warren, who is expected to easily win reelection this year and is seen as another 2020 presidential contender, may have more of a free hand in the debate to antagonize banks and the Democrats who back the bill.

She said the issue is "whether or not senators are on the side of protecting the economy and taxpayers or on the side of giant banks."

"Remember Countrywide?" she said, referring to the mortgage lender that became synonymous with the crisis. "It was about $200 billion, which is smaller than some of the banks that will be deregulated by this bill. The heart of this bill is to take 30 of the 40 biggest banks in this country off the watch-list so that they can load up on risks again and if things go wrong put the American taxpayer back on the hook."

Brown and Warren are backed by outside activists that are mobilizing to stop the bill from getting traction. They're trying to make it politically painful for Democrats to stand up for it.

Indivisible, an increasingly influential liberal advocacy group that formed as part of the resistance to Trump's election, has published a detailed script outlining how to rebut the bill in calls with Senate staffers.

Indivisible is also calling on its supporters to confront senators about the legislation during the upcoming congressional recess. In sample town hall questions, it suggests that voters ask Democratic senators whether they will commit to opposing "this Republican down payment on ending regulation of Wall Street."

Another progressive group, Demand Progress, has launched a social media campaign through its Rootstrikers arm identifying the bill's Democratic co-sponsors as the "#BailoutCaucus."

Public Citizen, the nonprofit consumer watchdog, has been making its case against the bill on the Hill and by coordinating with allies in the states of Democrats who have co-sponsored the bill.

"We're making it clear that there will be political consequences for being on the wrong side of this bill," Demand Progress campaign director Kurt Walters said. "We and others will then ramp up pressure on potential swing votes as necessary."

Crapo says he hopes the Senate will take up the bill shortly after lawmakers return after Presidents Day.

For the bill's supporters, the focus is on maintaining the core group that has helped make it one of the only successful examples of bipartisan compromise during this Congress.

"We have enough votes right now to pass it," Heitkamp said. "I know there are people who would like to see 70-75 votes. Maybe we can't get there, but we'll continue to have the discussion."

"Why is it a bad bill? Why is it dangerous?" Tester said in an interview, when asked about the opposition to the proposal. "We give relief to community banks. This should have been done years ago... This is going to allow for access to capital in rural areas like Montana," he said. "I don't get it."

The problem with winning over more Democrats is that there is little room to negotiate among the coalition of supporters when it comes to making changes that newcomers might seek. That's why the biggest threat to the bill's passage is the House, where Republicans want to do much more to dismantle Dodd-Frank. For now, it's unclear what they will try to add to the bill and whether Senate Democrats would go along with it.

"There is a rule, and this goes to working with the House as well: You don't get to amend this thing unless we all agree," Heitkamp said.

You can bet yer britches that top Wall Street whore Chuck Schumer isn't leaning on any of the Bailout Caucus to maintain party solidarity on this one. Schumer, after all, has taken more cash from Wall Street than any non-presidential politician in history-- $26,735,303 at last count, compared to "just" $12,276,007 for McConnell and a measly $11,909,105 for Speaker Ryan. Schumer wants to be seen by voters as being on the side on the people against the banksters... while delivering for the banksters-- who have financed his rise to power-- when it really counts.

You'd Think Democrats Would Have Learned-- People/Voters Don't Like A Rigged System, But... Meet The Bailout Caucus

Almost a month ago, Alan Rapaport did a piece for the NY Times, Democrats Add Momentum to G.O.P. Push to Loosen Banking Rules about how conservative Wall Street-friendly Democrats in the Senate are helping Republicans "loosen rules imposed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis."

Buoyed by their success in rewriting the tax code, the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have now set their sights on helping the financial industry, which has been engaged in a quiet but concerted push to relax many post-crisis rules and regulatory obligations, particularly for thousands of small- and medium-sized banks.

But unlike the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul, which passed along party lines, the effort to loosen the post-crisis rules is somewhat bipartisan. A group of Senate Democrats has joined Republicans to support legislation that would mark the first major revision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, a signature accomplishment of President Barack Obama that has been deemed “a disaster” by President Trump.

The bill would allow hundreds of smaller banks to avoid certain elements of federal oversight, including stress tests, which measure a bank’s ability to withstand a severe economic downturn. Under current law, banks with assets of $50 billion or more are considered “systemically important financial institutions” and therefore governed by stricter rules. The bill would raise that threshold to institutions with assets of $250 billion or more, leaving fewer than 10 big banks in the United States subject to the stricter oversight.

Banks with assets of $50 billion to $100 billion would be immediately freed from those requirements. Financial institutions with $100 billion to $250 billion in assets, such as BB&T and American Express, would no longer be subject to tougher rules after 18 months, although the Federal Reserve would retain the authority to periodically conduct stress tests on those firms.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader and Kentucky Republican, is expected to bring the bill to the Senate floor within the next month.

Hurdles remain. The House has already passed its own far more sweeping deregulatory effort. And progressive Democrats who warn that the legislation would return Wall Street to its more reckless past are mobilizing in hopes of derailing the legislation-- even if that means attacking fellow Democrats who support it.

“This bill increases the risk of another taxpayer bailout, and I will continue to challenge supporters of this bill-- from both parties-- to explain why they stand on the side of big banks instead of working families,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat.

Still, lobbyists, lawmakers and administration officials say this is the make or break year for overhauling Dodd-Frank.

Rob Nichols, president of the American Bankers Association, said the legislation would correct what banks view as regulatory overreach borne of a hasty legislative effort to shore up a cratering financial system after the 2008 crisis. “What I do think is significant here is that you have a recognition that’s been building for several years that parts of the policy response were misguided, ill-conceived and missed the mark,” Mr. Nichols said.

The Senate Dems helping Mike Crapo (R-ID) pull this bankster legislation through are anti-populist conservaDems Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Jon Tester (MT), Chris Coons (DE), Tom Carper (DE), Joe Donnelly (IN), Claire McCaskill (MO), Gary Peters (MI), Mark Warner (VA), Tim Kaine (VA), Joe Manchin (WV) and Michael Bennet (CO) + independent Angus King (ME).

Despite the bipartisan support for legislative action, it will not happen without a fight, especially when Wall Street is generating record profits and after companies just received large tax cuts. Moderate Democrats who sign on to a bill to help community banks can expect to hear from the party’s progressive wing that they have defanged Dodd-Frank.

The dissension among Democrats was evident as the banking committee considered the bill last year. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, and Ms. Warren were especially vocal in their opposition to a bill that they viewed as a dangerous giveaway.

“This major move to deregulate the big banks is a major move to undermining Dodd-Frank,” said Adam Green, a founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Especially in these Red States where economic populism is the key to Democrats winning re-election in 2018, the folks in the most competitive elections should realize that doing the bidding of the banks is not especially helpful to them.”

Ms. Warren is expected to mobilize her network of progressive activists to oppose the changes to Dodd-Frank. She is even prepared to make her Democratic colleagues cast difficult votes during the amendment process to drive home the point that banks that received bailout money should not be deregulated.

Jeremy Kress of the University of Michigan was formerly an attorney in the Banking Regulation & Policy Group of the Federal Reserve Board’s Legal Division. On Wednesday he penned an OpEd for The Hill about how Crapo's bill has turned into a Trojan Horse. He wrote that "on its face, Senate Bill 2155-- dubbed the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act-- contains some sensible reforms. The bill exempts smaller banks from complicated risk-based capital requirements, subjecting them instead to a simple leverage ratio... Like the Greeks’ gift to Troy, however, what is hidden inside S.2155 is what’s dangerous. Three troubling provisions in the bill could presage the next financial crisis."

First, S.2155 rolls back the most significant post-crisis reforms for the United States’ biggest banks. The Dodd-Frank Act mandated enhanced oversight of banks with $50 billion or more in assets to prevent them from becoming too big to fail...The bill would raise the enhanced oversight threshold to $250 billion, effectively deregulating 25 of the 38 biggest banks in the United States, accounting for nearly one-sixth of the assets in the banking sector. Freed from enhanced oversight, these institutions would go back to operating under many of the same rules that failed to prevent the financial crisis.

...S.2155’s second hidden threat is that it deregulates the U.S. operations of Deutsche Bank, Barclays and other systemically important foreign banks-- firms whose failure could inflict harm on the U.S. economy.

After foreign megabanks experienced destabilizing funding runs during the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve implemented rules requiring large foreign banks to keep capital in the United States and rules preventing those banks from moving assets to their home country when the next crisis hits.

S.2155 removes these important protections and leaves the U.S. economy vulnerable to foreign banks’ misconduct and excessive risk-taking.

Finally, and most troublingly, S.2155 makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to regulate the biggest U.S. banks, including Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs. The bill requires the Fed to tailor its enhanced oversight of the largest banks, taking into account “appropriate risk-related factors.”

While tailoring is a laudable goal, “appropriate risk-related factors" is a legal landmine. Indeed, that is the exact statutory language that MetLife cited last year when it won a court order overturning its designation as a systemically important firm.

He urges the Democratic co-sponsors "to to drop their support or demand significant revisions before S.2155 comes to the Senate floor. Lowering the enhanced oversight threshold, ensuring that the bill covers foreign banks and modifying the tailoring provision would be an appropriate place to start... [and] stop this Trojan Horse before it enters the city gates."

Schumer, who's taken more in bribes form the Financial Sector than anyone in history other than presidential candidates ($26,735,303)-- more than McConnell ($12,276,007) and Ryan ($11,909,105) combined-- isn't on the list. Instead he handed the banksters a fabulous gift-- the ultimate House sleazebag as his handpicked candidate for the Senate, Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ). Sinema serves on the corrupt House Financial Services Committee, where she works assiduously to help the banksters rig the system against working families. There's no Democrat on the committee more in Wall Street's pocket and they've rewarded her handsomely. In the 2016 cycle she was the recipient of more legalistic bribes than any Democrat on the committee ($1,013,540) and among Democrats in the House, only notorious scumbags Patrick Murphy ($2,536,038) and Joe Crowley ($1,086,673) took more than she did. So far this cycle, the banksters have given Sinema $717,887, more than any House Democrat other than fully-owned Wall Street subsidiary Josh Gottheimer ($803,824). The banksters have given her more than any other 2018 non-incumbent Senate candidate-- including Republicans! The runner up is Indiana crook Luke Messer ($591,776).

Cars, Jobs, Kentucky

Today Bernie did incredibly well in Kentucky but just couldn't penetrate the low-info precincts in Louisville and Lexington... not even with all the support he had from low-info precincts in coal country. Hillary, with all her gigantic "advantages," managed to scrape by with the narrowest 212,549 (46.8%) to 210,626 (46.3%) plurality. Bernie's strongest returns came from historic Harlan county in the extreme east of the state where he beat her 62.8% to 25.9%. Both candidates have been awarded 25 delegates each so far, with 5 remaining to be determined. And then the Oregon results came in... and Bernie took the lead with the first ballots counted and never lost it. A.P. called the race with just 60% of the vote counted and Bernie ahead 219,459 (53.0%) to 194,359 (47.0%) for the establishment candidate who stands for the status quo. (His lead has grown as more ballots were counted.)

After her big win-- fraught with the typical boss-ridden voting "irregularities"-- in New York, Hillary had declared the primaries over and said she wouldn't be competing with Bernie any longer, just campaigning against Trump. A couple of thumpings in Indiana and West Virginia cured her of that and she was all over Kentucky, a closed primary state that doesn't allow independents to vote. The main thrust of her campaign in Kentucky was to malign Bernie with a discredited lie she tried out-- and failed with-- in Michigan, namely that he had opposed the auto bailout.

Her technique, perhaps not as blatant as Trump's, was to simply mislead voters. Bernie voted for the auto bailout-- and she knows it. When it was shoved into the TARP Wall Street bankster bailout for her campaign financiers he voted no, while she, of course voted yes with great enthusiasm, which partially explains why so many independents and progressives will never vote for her to be president. TARP was to bail out the banksters and everyone knows it. She lost in Michigan because she was unable to deceive Democratic voters there. Maybe she thought Kentucky Democrats are dumber.

Her claim, PolitiFact, explained "leaves listeners with the impression that Sanders’ opposed bailing out the auto industry. But he voted in favor of providing auto companies with $14 billion, which was separate from the Wall Street bailout funds he opposed."

Yesterday one of Bernie's campaign spokespersons suggested she stop trying to distort the truth about his support for legislation to help carmakers and auto workers. Bernie, he said, voted for a $14 billion aid package which passed the House of Representatives on Dec. 10, 2008. When that bill ran into a Senate Republican roadblock, the White House turned to a separate Wall Street bailout fund for loans to the auto industry. "It is absolutely untrue to say that Sen. Sanders voted against helping the automobile industry and auto workers. Secretary Clinton first made this false claim before the Michigan primary. She now is recycling the erroneous charge in Kentucky. Once again, Secretary Clinton is simply not telling the truth... It is true that Sen. Sanders voted against bailing out the crooks on Wall Street whose illegal behavior and greed brought this economy into the worst downturn since the 1930s," the statement concludes.

Clinton and Sanders were both in the Senate at the time, and contrary to what Clinton implied Sunday, both supported the idea of an auto bailout.

Sanders argued that letting the auto industry go under was too big of a risk for middle-class workers-- it could lower wages across all sectors of the economy and have a ripple effect on states like Vermont that were fairly far removed from the auto industry. He was quoted by Vermont Public Radio at the time as saying:

The problem is if you don't act in the midst of a growing recession, what does it mean to create a situation where millions of more people become unemployed? And that could spread, and I have serious concerns about that. I think it would be a terrible idea to add millions more to the unemployment rolls.

But Sanders was vehemently against the larger $700 billion bailout to prop up the banks. (As evidenced by his presidential campaign, Sanders is no fan of Wall Street.) So he voted against the bank bailout.

The bank bailout was so big it had to be doled out in portions. In January 2009, Senate Republicans tried to block the Treasury Department from releasing the second half of the money, some of which was designated for the auto industry. Sanders, based on his opposition to the Wall Street bailout, voted against releasing that money as well.

Please consider helping Bernie win this thing, especially as crucial primaries in New Jersey and California come closer:

A Non-Neoliberal Woman President Is Not One of the Choices

by Gaius Publius

"I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons" (he does mean both).
—Wall Street trader Chris Arnade

I recently read Joan Walsh's passionate endorsement of Hillary Clinton, and while she speaks for herself, it's obvious that many people feel as she does. It's long past time for a woman to be nominated and long past time for the vicious, sexist and puerile attacks on her to cease. Hillary Clinton has been subjected to the kind of public abuse that I think only women who deal with the Internet fully appreciate. The cruelty of the insults many women are forced to endure is both frightening and dangerous. I truly believe you can't appreciate that kind of relentless abuse until you've personally felt it.

That said, if you are truly a progressive in your views and policy preferences, is Hillary Clinton the right woman to take the mantle of "first woman president"? Should the historically important first woman president, for example, be the one with last clear chance to end the grip of carbon before the planet burns, drowns, freezes and fries — yet also be the one to lead us into that black hole anyway?

Would any woman want that legacy for the "first woman president" — that she becomes the destroyer who threw away the final chance to save civilized life? We are beyond irony, if that proves true. (I'll write more in future, as I have in the past, on Clinton and carbon, though there's a small taste of what I'm talking about below. Look for the word "frackers.")

In the same way, I didn't want the first black president to be the one who proactively enabled slave-trading in Malaysia so the world's hyper-wealthy — including those on whom he will surely depend for a "Bill Clinton future," should he want one — can scoop yet more of the wealth of the world into their already bulging pockets? Aren't they rich enough already? Not in their eyes, nor in Obama's, apparently. This is also beyond irony, if you consider the suffering of Malaysian slaves. These people are worked to death and die in filth. Again, first black president.

If This Were a "Clean Election"...

Put simply, if this were a "clean election" (the analogy is to a "clean bill" in Congress, one that does one thing cleanly) ... if this were an all-things-equal-but-the-gender election ... if, for example, Elizabeth Warren were the candidate running against her ... there would be no fight but a policy fight in the Democratic Party. The nomination would belong to the winner based on how she would govern. You would still see the policy fight in the Party, but the gender discussion wouldn't confuse it.

But this is not a "clean election." This is an election between a potential "first woman president" — who is indeed treated very badly as a person in many quarters, but who is also, to all appearances, "money to the core" — and a male who is her opposite when it comes to wealth and income policy. When it comes to economics, electing a progressive woman is not one of the choices.

Just one example of the policy differences between Sanders and Clinton. Sanders would break up the big banks and starve the "shadow banking" nexus with Warren's 21st Century Glass-Steagall bill (yes, it does address shadow banking). In contrast, Clinton would keep the big banks whole, regulate "shadow banks" a bit more closely than before, and tell Wall Street to "cut it out" when big money crosses the line.

Sanders would put bankers in jail if they commit fraud. Would Clinton? (Has Obama?) Clinton hasn't spoken on this, but "cut it out" doesn't sound like orange jumpsuit language to me.

If you're a Democrat (or a non-tribal progressive) and gender is your issue, then Clinton makes an interesting choice in the primary — so long as you're willing to accept her neoliberal, generally pro-wealth policies. (In that regard, I would love every Clinton-leaning voter to ask herself if she would still support Clinton if Warren were running against her. After all, some people are supporting Clinton because of her neoliberalism, her "establishment centrism" and credibility, not in spite of it.)

But if you're a Democrat (or a non-tribal progressive) and money is your issue, the thought of electing the next wealth-friendly neoliberal president — of either gender — certainly makes you shudder. Does that mean you shouldn't support her in the general election? No, it means you should make that choice then. This is not then — this is now.

Which Candidate, If Elected, Is Most Likely to be Tough on "Big Money"?

Let's look at a few pieces that drive the above point painfully home (painful to me at least, though likely painful for any Warren supporter as well, for the obvious reason). To that end, I'd like to look at three, two recent ones and something from a few months ago. I won't offer long quotes for the last two pieces, but ask you to click through instead. The first, however, I'd like to present in detail.

◾ "I worked on Wall Street. I am skeptical Hillary Clinton will rein it in"

From a recent Guardian article, this from long-time Wall Street trader Chris Arnade. This is worth reading in full. He starts:

I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons. I am not alone; most bankers owe their careers, and their wealth, to them. Over the last 25 years they – with the Clintons it is never just Bill or Hillary – implemented policies that placed Wall Street at the center of the Democratic economic agenda, turning it from a party against Wall Street to a party of Wall Street.

That is why when I recently went to see Hillary Clinton campaign for president and speak about reforming Wall Street I was skeptical. What I heard hasn’t changed that skepticism. The policies she offers are mid-course corrections. In the Clintons’ world, Wall Street stays at the center, economically and politically. Given Wall Street’s power and influence, that is a dangerous place to leave them.

Now some of his story:

Salomon Brothers hired me in 1993, seven months after President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Getting a job had been easy, Wall Street was booming from deregulation that had begun under Reagan and was continuing under Clinton.

When Bill Clinton ran for office, he offered up him and Hillary (“Two for the price of one”) as New Democrats, embracing an image of being tough on crime, but not on business. Despite the campaign rhetoric, nobody on the trading floor I joined had voted for the Clintons or trusted them.

Few traders on the floor were even Democrats, who as long as anyone could remember were Wall Street’s natural enemy. That view was summarized in the words of my boss: “Republicans let you make money and let you keep it. Democrats don’t let you make money, but if you do, they take it.”

Despite Wall Street’s reticence, key appointments were swinging their way. Robert Rubin, who had been CEO of Goldman Sachs, was appointed to a senior White House job as director of the National Economic Council. The Treasury Department was also being filled with banking friendly economists who saw the markets as a solution, not as a problem.

The administration’s economic policy took shape as trickle down, Democratic style. They championed free trade, pushing Nafta. They reformed welfare, buying into the conservative view that poverty was about dependency, not about situation. They threw the old left a few bones, repealing prior tax cuts on the rich, but used the increased revenues mostly on Wall Street’s favorite issue: cutting the debt.

But when Clinton bailed out Mexico to make Wall Street debt-holders whole, Wall Street knew that administration was theirs:

Most importantly, when faced with their first financial crisis, they [the Clinton administration] bailed out Wall Street.

That crisis came in January 1995, halfway through the administration’s first term. Mexico, after having boomed from the optimism surrounding Nafta, went bust. It was a huge embarrassment for the administration, given the push they had made for Nafta against a cynical Democratic party.

Money was fleeing Mexico, and much of it was coming back through me and my firm. Selling investors’ Mexican bonds was my first job on Wall Street, and now they were trying to sell them back to us. But we hadn’t just sold Mexican bonds to clients, instead we did it using new derivatives product to get around regulatory issues and take advantages of tax rules, and lend the clients money. Given how aggressive we were, and how profitable it was for us, older traders kept expecting to be stopped by regulators from the new administration, but that didn’t happen.

When Mexico started to collapse, the shudders began....

Those shudders were entirely unnecessary. The Clinton administration saved the banks by bailing out their debtors. They pushed for "a $50bn global bail-out of Mexico, arguing that to not do so would devastate the US and world economy. Unmentioned was that it would have also devastated Wall Street banks" (my emphasis). The success of that bailout became a template that's with us today. It was "used it as an economic blueprint that emphasized Wall Street. It also emphasized bailouts".

As a result, "Wall Street now had both political parties working for them, and really nobody holding them accountable. Now, no trade was too aggressive, no risk too crazy, no behavior to unethical and no loss too painful. It unleashed a boom that produced plenty of smaller crisis (Russia, Dotcom), before culminating in the housing and financial crisis of 2008."

This was not just Bill and his actions. It was his administration. As Arnade notes above, when Bill Clinton ran for office he offered himself and Hillary as “Two for the price of one,” as "New Democrats, embracing an image of being tough on crime, but not on business." Is Hillary still of this mind? She was in 2008. As a senator, according to Arnade, "Hillary Clinton voted to bail-out the banks, a vote she still defends." A vote opposite to the vote of Bernie Sanders.

◾ Where's Is Wall Street's Money Going Today?

And now just one of the reasons the story told above is still the story today, and is still a Hillary Clinton story. The following graphic show data through October, 2015:

Campaign donations from individuals who work in the securities and investments industry (source; click to enlarge)

This is an awful lot of money for an individual to give to someone who's going to jail them for fraud. Again, this and the previous bulleted piece don't comprise two stories, an older one and a newer one. They are clearly one story, even without considering the recent money from Wall Street speeches.

◾ Clinton Goes to Pennsylvania to Reap Windfall from Pennsylvania Frackers

One more point, this time about the climate, one of the places we started this piece. Consider the following from Brad Johnson, something from the current fundraising cycle:

Last night, Hillary Clinton attended a gala fundraiser in Philadelphia at the headquarters of Franklin Square Capital Partners, a major investor in the fossil-fuel industry, particularly domestic fracking. The controversial fracking industry is particularly powerful in Pennsylvania, which will host the Democratic National Convention this July.

Clinton has avoided taking any clear stand on fracking. While she has embraced the Clean Power Plan, which assumes a strong increase in natural-gas power plants, she also supports a much deeper investment in solar electricity than the baseline plan. The pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record, run by David Brock, touts Clinton’s aggressive pro-fracking record.

Numerous grassroots groups have risen to oppose the toxic fracking of Pennsylvania and its labor abuses, including Marcellus Protest, No Fracking Way, Pennsylvanians Against Fracking, Keep Tap Water Safe, Stop Fracking Now, and Stop the Frack Attack.

As reported by the Intercept’s Lee Fang, “One of Franklin Square Capital’s investment funds, the FS Energy & Power Fund” the Intercept’s Lee Fang reports, “is heavily invested in fossil fuel companies, including offshore oil drilling and fracking.” The company cautions that “changes to laws and increased regulation or restrictions on the use of hydraulic fracturing may adversely impact” the fund’s performance.

Through its fund, Franklin Square invests in private fracking and oil drilling companies across the nation, as well as Canada and the Gulf of Mexico. This includes heavy investment in Pennsylvania frackers. ...

There's much more at the link — this is just a taste.

Will the first woman president be our "fracker in chief" and put the earth on a diet of methane, a deadly greenhouse gas, until it fries? I'm afraid, if the first woman president is Clinton, the answer will be yes. It breaks my heart that this is not a "clean election," but it's not, and it's not one of our choices to make it one.

(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you'd like to help out, go here; you can adjust the split any way you like at the link. If you'd like to "phone-bank for Bernie," go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here. And thanks!)

GP

Barney Frank Drops A Financial Crisis Bombshell; The Press Responds With Silence

by Gaius Publius

I can't take credit for this, though I wish I could. David Dayen, who writes at Salon, has been reading Barney Frank's new book Frank and also its reviews. Dayen is one of the most knowledgeable writers on the mortgage and financial crises — both. (Note to readers: It's not a financial crisis if there's no mortgage crisis. It's the inability to pay mortgage debt that started the avalanche of derivative-caused banking losses.)

Dayen noticed that in his book Frank makes a startling revelation, but since it involves (a) mortgage borrowers, not bankers, and (b) the current Democratic president, it has gotten zero coverage. What's the revelation? Barack Obama could have singlehandedly made sure TARP money, as mandated by Congress, was made available for mortgage relief, and chose not to.

For doomed mortgage-holders, as opposed to protected and bailed-out bankers, that makes Obama the perp. How do we know? Barney Frank said so in print. Here's Dayen's catch (my emphasis):

Barney Frank drops a bombshell: How a shocking anecdote explains the financial crisis

Barney Frank has a new autobiography out. He’s long been one of the nation’s most quotable politicians. And Washington lives in perpetual longing for intra-party conflict.

So why has a critical revelation from Frank’s book, one that implicates the most powerful Democrat in the nation, been entirely expunged from the record? The media has thus far focused on Frank’s wrestling with being a closeted gay congressman, or his comment that Joe Biden “can’t keep his mouth shut or his hands to himself.” But nobody has focused on Frank’s allegation that Barack Obama refused to extract foreclosure relief from the nation’s largest banks, as a condition for their receipt of hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money.

The anecdote comes on page 295 of “Frank,” a title that the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee holds true to throughout the book. The TARP legislation included specific instructions to use a section of the funds to prevent foreclosures. Without that language, TARP would not have passed; Democratic lawmakers who helped defeat TARP on its first vote cited the foreclosure mitigation piece as key to their eventual reconsideration.

TARP was doled out in two tranches [slices; bundles] of $350 billion each. The Bush administration, still in charge during TARP’s passage in October 2008, used none of the first tranche on mortgage relief, nor did Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson use any leverage over firms receiving the money to persuade them to lower mortgage balances and prevent foreclosures. Frank made his anger clear over this ignoring of Congress’ intentions at a hearing with Paulson that November. Paulson argued in his defense, “the imminent threat of financial collapse required him to focus single-mindedly on the immediate survival of financial institutions, no matter how worthy other goals were.”

But Frank kept pushing: 

With the first tranche of TARP funds running out by the end of the year, Frank writes, “Paulson agreed to include homeowner relief in his upcoming request for a second tranche of TARP funding. But there was one condition: He would only do it if the President-elect asked him to.”

The "President-elect" was Barack Obama, and he said no, we're just going to bail out the banks, which is told by Frank via this classic Frank-ism:

Frank goes on to explain that Obama rejected the request, saying “we have only one president at a time.” Frank writes, “my frustrated response was that he had overstated the number of presidents currently on duty,” which equally angered both the outgoing and incoming officeholders.

Dayen goes on to document just how often the President-elect violated that "one president at a time" principle before taking office. He also notes that there was a second round of negotiation with Congress about releasing the second tranche, in which promises were made by the President-elect and broken. Seems the man was determined not to bail out the "wrong people" — an opinion widely held among elite opinion makers and leaders.

Remember, this is Barack Obama vintage 2008. Certainly post-campaign — he'd already won — but pre–taking office, with all the rolling betrayals that entailed. Only those watching his FISA vote, perhaps, knew what was coming.

Dayen couches this unfortunate event in humanitarian concerns, as he should, but also in economic terms. By not bailing out the nation's purchasers, the public, Obama extended the crisis:

That’s the main reason why the significance of Obama’s decision cannot be overstated. The fact that we waited six years to get some semblance of a decent economic recovery traces back directly to the failure to alleviate the foreclosure crisis. Here was a moment, right near the beginning, when both public money and leverage could have been employed to stop foreclosures. Instead of demanding homeowner help when financial institutions relied on massive government support, the Administration passed, instead prioritizing nursing banks back to health and then asking them to give homeowners a break, which the banks predictably declined.

But again, we're back to elite opinion, which holds that even though the way out of a crisis like this is to stimulate buying and demand, that option is off the table. Because, whether people will say it or not, in our post-Reagan job-creator world, only the wealthy deserve to be made whole by the government. That's not snark; it's one of the guiding principles of our government.

Dayen makes a great catch, and his Salon piece is a very good read, including his baseball-metaphor conclusion. My point is a little different than his, however. Our need to service the "free" market  wealthy, obvious in this anecdote, will kill us, literally. But that's a climate story for another day.

He drank the milkshake of the mortgaged.
Did Obama hold the straw?

Do stay tuned though; the "free" market wealthy are draining most of California's water, drinking that milkshake as well, and there's a war brewing. More on that shortly.

GP

The Ultimate Culprits On Behalf Of Wall Street Deregulation: Chuck Schumer (D) And Kevin McCarthy (R)-- And Who Are The New Dems?

Two rats: Kevin McCarthy and Chuck Schumer

Elizabeth Warren's clarion calls-- three on the Senate floor this week-- may have been derided by South Carolina closet queen Lindsay Graham (R) as "immature" and "emotional," but they were having their intended effect on their intended audience (which was not South Carolina closet queens on the other side of the aisle). Centrist Jeanne Shaheen joined the progressive stalwarts opposing the Antonio Weiss confirmation and both Harry Reid and Barbara Milkulski started moving away from the deal Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had struck to allow the worst and most predatory banksters to deregulate a crucial part of Dodd Frank that protects taxpayers from bailouts of gambling-addicted, greed-obessed Wall Street banks. But Schumer-- who had successfully gotten the Wall Street Journal to withdraw it's correct assertion that Schumer was behind the bailout provision-- went on the warpath, covering up for himself in public while acting behind the scenes as the enforcer in the Senate for the banksters. Who even needs Republicans when you have Chuck Schumer?

Correction: An earlier version of this editorial misstated the role played by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) in promoting the change in derivatives regulation as part of the budget legislation.

Elves didn't put the gratuitous CitiBank-written provision in the spending bill. Schumer did. Friday Phil Mattingly, writing for Bloomberg, speculates that a path back to power for Democrats is to abandon the Schumer approach of kissing up to the banksters and go a more populist route, the route espoused by working family oriented Democrats like Sherrod Brown (OH), Brian Schatz (HI), Jeff Merkely (OR), Bernie Sanders (VT) and, of course, Elizabeth Warren (MA).

Led by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrats have come out in increasing numbers against President Barack Obama's nominee for undersecretary of domestic finance, Antonio Weiss, because of his ties to Wall Street. Warren has also been the leading voice urging Democrats to reject the compromise in the $1.1 trillion government spending bill because it includes language that would cut down a narrow rule guiding how banks can hold derivatives imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Democratic opposition to that provision nearly killed the spending bill in the House, where lawmakers narrowly eked out passage 219-206.

"Certainly the Weiss fight is a proxy fight over Wall Street regulation and probably one over the direction of the Democratic Party," said Brian Gardner, director of Washington research for the investment banking firm Keefe Bruyette & Woods Inc. The fight over the derivatives provision probably has to be viewed "as a proxy fight as well, since it’s mostly symbolic" given the small sliver of derivatives held by the world's largest banks the provision actually affects, he said.

In other words, according to Gardner, the fights are less about the actual issues than what those issues represent. As Democrats strain to find their voice in the wake of a sweeping defeat in the midterm elections, these fights provide a test of how much leverage the party really has to force changes, and, perhaps more importantly, how much patience the White House will have when those changes fly in the face of the president's preferred path forward.

...Warren has helped lead another insurgency that flared over the must-pass spending bill, where bipartisan negotiations led to rolling back part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The bill would ease one specific rule on how, and where, banks hold derivatives, the financial instruments that helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis.

It's a provision that has a long and tortured history, starting from its initial inclusion into the drafts of what would become the financial reform law (where it was opposed by then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, then-FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, the Obama administration's Treasury Department, then-Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd and then-House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, both Democrats).

Banks including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase & Co. hate the provision, which they deem equally onerous and unnecessary, and have made no secret of their lobbying push to get rid of it over the last four years. The spending bill, it turns out, has finally given them an opening. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO, made calls to lawmakers in support of the bill, according to people familiar with the lobbying. But it's not as if Wall Street lobbyists are operating on their own. Republicans and Democrats have supported previous bills to strip the provision. A version went to the House floor in 2013 and 70 Democrats joined 222 Republicans to support its passage. Senate Democratic leadership, wary of re-opening the financial reform law, never took the measure up even as many of their own members likely would have supported its passage.

Yet removing it from the spending bill has now become a rallying cry for the party. Warren took to the Senate floor to rip the compromise on Wednesday and returned on Thursday to call on Republicans to join her in opposition. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Frank, now retired, and asked him to raise objections, which he did forcefully. Outside progressive groups and even the party campaign committee have used the issue to rile up grassroots supporters. Representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the financial services committee, publicly and privately urged the members of her caucus to oppose the spending bill because of the inclusion of the derivatives provision.

Democrats were central players in the spending bill negotiations and signed off on the inclusion of the derivatives language. In exchange, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the two derivatives regulators, were given modest funding increases. People involved in the process said other Republican-backed policy changes to the law were blocked. The White House was aware of the trade off and while Obama opposes the Dodd-Frank changes, he supports the bill's passage, according to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.

As the spending bill works its way through Congress, one thing is clear: the past few weeks have given Democrats the opportunity to make Wall Street their issue and they have increasingly grabbed onto it with both hands.

Obama is going to be less and less of a factor for Democrats charting the party's future. And the Clintons-- the epitome of Democratic connivance with the banksters-- will become more and more of a factor. And in Congress... well just start with a Washington Post headline from Friday: Democrats who voted for the CRomnibus have received twice as much money from the finance industry as the ‘no’ voters. This kind of pro-Wall Street, anti-family activism is the entire raison d'être of the New Dem coalition. Unlike the other big component in the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the Blue Dogs, the New Dems are not about racism, misogyny, homophobia or any other GOP social values. The New Dems are about Wall Street and Big Business, which funds their careers. There are no active New Dems who aren't active pawns of Wall Street.

The New Dems haven't announced their new members yet. They endorsed 15 wretched conservative candidates in the last cycle, most of whom lost, several spectacularly: Aaron Wolf (NY), Kevin Strouse (CIA), Joe Bock (IN), Aimee Belgard (NJ), Manan Trivedi (PA), Amanda Renteria (CA), John Lewis (MT), John Foust (VA), Emily Cain (ME) and Erin Bilbray (NV). These were the 5 corrupt conservatives they backed who managed to win-- and will presumably be new members of the dreadful group:

• corrupt former bank lobbyist Pete Aguilar (CA)
• Don Beyer (VA)
• Gwen Graham (FL)
• Kathleen Rice (NY)
• former Republican Brad Ashford (NE)

You can always expect these 5, along with the younger brother of corrupt NJ boss George Norcross (Donald), who I also expect to see join the New Dems, to trample the interests of ordinary working families in favor of the interests of their Wall Street and Big Business financiers. Although he ran against a Republican, Aguilar was heavily backed ($346,841) by one of Mitch McConnell's big financial boosters, the Credit Union National Association. Foolish environmental and women's groups backed Gwen Graham, who isn't just a New Dem, but a Blue Dog as well. Clueless players like the naive and badly run League of Conservative will rue the day they ever wasted their contributors' money on Graham. We haven't run a membership list of the New Dems before, although we often write about how they tend to vote as a group against progressive initiatives. On Thursday, for example, of the 57 Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP to deregulate the banksters, 30 were New Dems: Ron Barber (AZ), John Barrow (GA), Ami Bera (CA), John Carney (DE), Gerry Connolly (VA), Susan Davis (CA), John Delaney (MD), Bill Foster (IL), Pete Gallego (TX), Jim Himes (CT), Ron Kind (WI), Ann Kuster (NH), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Carolyn McCarthy (NY), Gregory Meeks (NY), Jim Moran (VA), Patrick Murphy (FL), Bill Owens (NY), Ed Perlmutter (CO), Gary Peters (MI), Scott Peters (CA), Mike Quigley (IL), Cedric Richmond (LA), Brad Schneider (IL), Allyson Schwartz (PA), David Scott (GA), Terri Sewell (AL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), and, of course, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), as well as former New Dem chairman Joe Crowley and Democratic Whip Hoyer, the two biggest New Dem enablers in Congress. This is the entire official list of New Dem members, although the new members haven't been inducted and the 13 members leaving Congress next week are still showing up:

• Ron Kind, chairman (WI)
• Jim Himes, vice-chair (CT)
• Rick Larsen, vice-chair (WA)
• Gerry Connolly, vice-chair (VA)
• Ron Barber (AZ)
• John Barrow (GA)
• Ami Bera (CA)
• Lois Capps (CA)
• Tony Cárdenas (CA)
• John Carney (DE)
• Andre Carson (IL)
• Joaquin Castro (TX)
• Jim Cooper (TN)
• Joe Courtney (CT)
• Susan Davis (CA)
• John Delaney (MD)
• Suzan DelBene (WA)
• Eliot Engel (NY)
• Elizabeth Esty (CT)
• Bill Foster (IL)
• Pete Gallego (TX)
• Joe Garcia (FL)
• Colleen Hanabusa (HI)
• Denny Heck (WA)
• Rush Holt (NJ)
• Derek Kilmer (WA)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
• Ann Kuster (NH)
• Dan Maffei (NY)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (NY)
• Carolyn McCarthy (NY)
• Mike McIntyre (NC)
• Gregory Meeks (NY)
• Jim Moran (VA)
• Patrick Murphy (FL)
• Bill Owens (NY)
• Ed Perlmutter (CO)
• Gary Peters (MI)
• Scott Peters (CA)
• Jared Polis (CO)
• Mike Quigley (IL)
• Cedric Richmond (LA)
• Loretta Sanchez (CA)
• Adam Schiff (CA)
• Brad Schneider (IL)
• Kurt Schrader (OR)
• Allyson Schwartz (PA)
• David Scott (GA)
• Terri Sewell (AL)
• Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)
• Adam Smith (WA)
• Juan Vargas (CA)
• Filemon Vela (TX)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL)