tra-la tra-la-la-la-la-la

[click image]

.

But Dodd-Frank was neither an FDR-style, paradigm-shifting reform, nor a historic assault on free enterprise. What it was, ultimately, was a cop-out, a Band-Aid on a severed artery. If it marks the end of anything at all, it represents the end of the best opportunity we had to do something real about the criminal hijacking of America's financial-services industry. During the yearlong legislative battle that forged this bill, Congress took a long, hard look at the shape of the modern American economy — and then decided that it didn't have the stones to wipe out our country's one dependably thriving profit center: theft.

...

Dodd-Frank was never going to be a meaningful reform unless these two fateful Clinton-era laws — commercial banks gambling with taxpayer money, and unregulated derivatives being traded in the dark — were reversed. The story of how the last real shot at reining in Wall Street got routed tells you everything you need to know about how, and on whose behalf, our government works. It was Congress at its most cowardly, deceptive best, with both parties teaming up to subject reform to death by a thousand paper cuts — with the worst cuts coming, literally, in the final moments before the bill's passage.

...

What happened next was a prime example of the basic con of congressional politics. Throughout the debate over finance reform, Democrats had sold the public on the idea that it was the Republicans who were killing progressive initiatives. In reality, Republican and Democratic leaders were working together with industry insiders and deep-pocketed lobbyists to prevent rogue members like Merkley and Levin from effecting real change. In public, the parties stage a show of bitter bipartisan stalemate. But when the cameras are off, they fuck like crazed weasels in heat.

...

First, in what amounted to an open handout to the financial interests represented by Brown, insurers, mutual funds and trusts were exempted from the Merkley-Levin ban. Then, with the floodgates officially open, every financial company in America was granted a massive loophole – one that allowed them to skirt the ban on risky gambling by investing a designated percentage of their holdings in hedge funds and private-equity companies.

The common justification for this loophole, known as the de minimis exemption, was that banks need it to retain their "traditional businesses" and remain competitive against hedge funds. In other words, Congress must allow banks to act like hedge funds because otherwise they'd be unable to compete with hedge funds in the hedge-fund business. With the introduction of the de minimis exemption, Merkley-Levin went from being an absolute ban on federally insured banks engaging in high-risk speculation to a feeble, half-assed restriction that will be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce.

The driving force behind the exemption was not Scott Brown, but the Obama administration itself. By all accounts, Geithner lobbied hard on the issue.

...

"It's not a total nothing burger," sighs one aide. "But, by the end, it didn't change a whole lot."

...

Lincoln, who was never considered a particularly strong advocate of finance reform, had originally proposed her ban on derivatives – the most radical reform in the entire bill – during a re-election campaign in which she faced a stiff populist challenge from Bill Halter, the lieutenant governor of Arkansas. Rumors circulated in Washington that Democratic leaders were cynically holding off on gutting Lincoln's proposal until she got past Halter in the primary.

If that was the plan, it worked. In early June, only a week after she defeated Halter in the runoff, Lincoln set about gutting her own rule.

And I did NOT excerpt all the outrageous parts. There are many, many more in Taibbi's piece. If you can read it and keep the contents of your stomach from hopping, you are a very sturdy creature.

.