Category Archives: politics

The Financial Stability Oversight Council

Posted on by
Reply

Ryan Tracy, writing in The Wall Street Journal, thought Republicans should love this Council and be at pains to keep it, even as they look to “quickly scal[e] back Obama-era policies.”

I demur.

Tracy suggested

Consider the powers [FSOC] grants the Treasury secretary: As chair of FSOC—whose members include the chairs of the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission—[Treasury Secretary nominee Steven] Mr Mnuchin  can convene a meeting of the top financial regulators at any time, and set the agenda.

SecTreas already can do this.  While he can’t compel attendance, the regulators would have hard time declining to attend or explaining to the rest of us their decision to stay away.

FSOC can make public statements or recommendations that have a name-and-shame effect.

SecTreas already can do this, too, as can any Cabinet Secretary and Agency head, did any of these have the courage to speak without hiding behind the comfortable numbers of a council.

FSOC’s greatest power is to designate “systemically important” financial firms outside the banking system for stricter federal oversight.

Mere existence of this authority is abusive overreach by Government. The Feds have no business in this business at all.

If Mr Mnuchin sympathizes with FSOC detractors, he could call fewer meetings with lighter agendas.

SecTreas doesn’t need the existence of a Council to decline to call meetings of regulators.

It’s past time for this abusive Council, and Dodd-Frank, to be done away with.

Full stop.

An Icon

Posted on by
Reply

Congressman John Lewis (D, GA), icon of the ’60s civil rights movement that included beatings and arrests by authorities for participating in the movement’s marches and protests, said that he does not consider President-Elect Donald Trump to have been legitimately elected and so Trump will not legitimately be President.  He’s openly trading on that legacy of his deep past to lend a measure of credence to his current behavior.

It’s a sad state of affairs for the Democrat to take this attitude and to support others who take this attitude.

What Lewis is carefully omitting in his remarks is that those beatings and arrests were ordered by Democrats—the leadership, for instance, of states like Mississippi where Bloody Sunday occurred.  What Lewis is carefully forgetting is his racist slur that Tea Partiers protesting the passage of Obamacare on the steps of the Capital Building shortly after passage were themselves racist.  What Lewis is choosing not to acknowledge is that since that day he has done his best to obstruct whatever Republicans have tried to accomplish, not because he disagreed with the programs and bills being debated, but because they were Republican programs and bills rather than Democratic.

Lewis richly deserves that legacy.  All he is doing, though, is badly abusing and cheapening that legacy with his selective remembering, his recent behavior, and his latest behavior.  Democrats who condone any of this merely cheapen themselves and contribute to the abuse of Lewis’ distant past.

Defending the Syria Red Line

Posted on by
Reply

President-On-The-Way-Out Barack Obama (D) has now decided to defend his red line and take overt action in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his citizens.

The Obama administration sanctioned 18 senior Syrian officials Thursday in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians.

And

the Obama administration sanctioned a Syrian technology company it says has supported the country’s ballistic-missile program.

Ooh.  That’s got to sting.  Excitingly firm action.  Be still, my heart.

Gatekeeper

Posted on by
Reply

Howard Kurtz decried the loss by the press of its gatekeeper status, exemplified by the response to CNN‘s recent smear by innuendo piece against President-Elect Donald Trump and Buzzfeed‘s immediately following overt smear piece that enumerated the carefully unsubstantiated salacious rumors about Trump which CNN had preciously withheld in its innuendo.

And with that dismay, Kurtz displayed for all to see the self-important arrogance of the press.

But with distrust of the media at record highs, the game is increasingly being played without an umpire to call balls and strikes.

Who is the press—even an honest press, did we have one—to presume to decide what is a ball and what is a strike, what is fit to print, what is suitable for the tender eyes and ears of American citizens to see or to hear?

Gatekeeper.  Gatekeeper!?  NLMSM arrogance is surpassed only by its self-evident dishonesty and bias.

Fiat Chrysler, the EPA, and Diesel Engines

Posted on by
Reply

The EPA has decided to accuse Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV of using software to cheat on diesel emission limits during tests, sort of reminiscent of Volkswagen’s peccadillo.

The problem for the EPA, though, is that

the EPA is not yet accusing Fiat Chrysler of installing illegal software patches on its diesel engines, but of failing to disclose potentially legal ones.

Never mind that if the software is legal, there’s nothing to disclose.  Not to fear, though, the problem with Fiat Chrysler is that

[i]t’s the company’s finances that make it vulnerable.

The company in the hole with a debt pile of some €6.5 billion ($6.9 billion) as of last September.  And the EPA knows that.

With any other agency, this might be a legitimate beef.  With this EPA, though, it smacks of legal blackmail.  “Nice business you got there; be too bad if something were to happen to it.  I know you’re short of cash; maybe there’s something we can do for each other to help you out.”