Bill Proposed to Control Runaway Financial Firms

I disagree with your assertion that this is a conservative controlled economy, but I rated this post a ten, anyway
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Thank you Tessa!

This all sounds like a good idea, and well overdue. The company I work for is presently in Bankruptcy, and being investigated by the SEC. It seems when leading institutions stop giving them money to expand, they decided to play with investors money. Hence what seems to be a ponzi scheme. They were well overextended when they purchased the facility, in the first place. But more facilities, meant drawing more unsuspecting investors, and meant more money for them. As a result so far, the crook er owner that is, is recieving $54,000 a month for failing in his business empire. Since bankruptcy has been declared the company has been taken over by an court appointed recievership, to manage the faciltiies own by them (150 of them). It is also in what is referred to as restructoring, to make it a viable company once more. The whole company has been running under an umbrella system, instead of a single entity. My opinion of that was it made it harder to figure out where funds where actually going. The whole thing is rather complex with more twist and turns then you can imagine. Right now there is an offer that has been agreeded on by an private investment firm, to buy all the remainder of facilities, but it has to be approved by the bankruptcy judge. So its a wait and see deal. This, if it happens, will be the third owner since I worked there. (Been there a little over 3 years) I feel for the investors, many of whom are eldery. And the eldery people who reside in these facilities. Its been no picnic working for this company, and watching the substandard care these poor people got, because of next to nil budget. If you want to read about a corperation run amuck bigtime read about Sunwest Management. They are based in Portland Oregon.

Wow dee,, thanks a bunch! The whole world needs to to more about operations like this....its amazing how crooks gather in dark places and scatter in the light of day

I know your post was about finacial firms, but corperations too, need to be regulated pretty much the same way. So many end up filing bankruptcy, due to poor management or greed, as is the case with the corperation I work for, then regroup somehow, and start anew under another name. They need to be slapped harder, and have reins put on them to keep them from getting to this point. It effects too many workers.

Your right, all corporations need stronger over sight, after all , the corporate entity itself was invented to avoid responsibility

As usual this is the wrong approach in the wrong hands with the wrong motive.
The simple solution is the application of existing antitrust tools (as was used against the famous Standard Oil Company). If a Corporation ids "too big to fail" then simply break them up into smaller independent parts. You don't have to control salaries, bonuses, and have the government involved in other mischief.

You said yourself:
"The power to breakup corporations that re too big to fail could also be included at some point."

That is all that is needed , anything more is tyranny.

The Anti Trust laws were weakened and raped by republicans in the last 20 years to where they are now usless. It was part of their Agenda since the Reagan Admin and was excellerated by the bushies

Whatever, then just fix and apply the antitrust rules rather than building a socialist government control edifice. The simpler the fix the better.

Some people consider anti-trust legislation to be socialist or they just call it that as an aecuse to prevetn bringing it back

The country has an interest in maintaining a healthy free-market system (despite what the socialist would have you believe) and as such can use antitrust to limit monopolistic cooperations and too few competitors etc.. It is quite too bad that the left doesn't recognize the dangers of a monopoly for goods/service when it is the government that holds the monopoly. They hate 'evil' monopolies everywhere else but not in government space. Hmmmm Hmmmm Hmmmm!

Let's see. Corps such as Standard Oil were broken up by original anti-trust legislation and then over the next 50 or 60 years of mergers reformed larger than before with obscene windfall profits. Good try but what was accomplished in thelong run?

Great point Jim!!

I'm saying if antitrust regulations were again returned back into favor they could solve the "too big to fail" issue without allowing the government nose under the tent in ways where it doesn't belong. Of course, companies today are larger in absolute value than in Standard Oil's day but probably not in market percentages.

Even in the heat of the economic panic only 70% of America disagrees with you.
http://people-press.org/report/498/obama-approval-slips
The free market doesn't work as well as it should, ONLY BETTER THAN EVERY OTHER SYSTEM.

Government regulation, and free markets are not opposites.

In either case, the other world markets gain market share. Every world power has taken their turn on top. It never was going to last forever, folks.

No sense basking in past glory. Work to do.

Very good point Tim

Not so sure about this, what does having a black Pres. have to do with it?

Really!

Must be from those "Right-wing blogs distort Frank's comments to suggest he "admitted" Dems seek to "increase" government control "on every front" including IT and News media! These people are riddled with fear of karma! Sad, so sad.

Amen johnice

Regulation has always been in governments job description.

We don't want any health care legislation to have any regulation in it, evidently.

Its the same old story, Tim,,, the right wing supports business like it is a religion.. its obvious now they care not for humanity or people. They only care about money... Any regulation forces fairness on some level and vast amounts of money cannot flow like it has been under regulation.

Can you even imagine rich Americans following suit.

"A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes."

"The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany's economic recovery."

Rita I would faint dead away

I agree, Dexter, and I own an investment management firm. There is nothing wrong with good regs. Regs were put into place for a reason. When they were thrown out, there should have been a very good reason, not just a blanket statement about 'free market'. The other issue was a blatant underfunding and subversive direction to regulatory bodies during the Bush years. These people were warned left and right by ethical people in the investment business about the train wreck that was coming - they deliberately chose to ignore the warnings. In fact, there are a number of examples where ethical people were punished for speaking out during those years.

We have got to face the fact (Ken, this is mostly for people like yourself) that Capitalism is only a facet of what makes up a society. A group of people should not define their structure based on one thing - commerce. And that is what many have been brain-washed into thinking. In recent years, people have come to think of themselves less as citizens with a moral obligation to each other and the group, and more as consumers and producers in competition with each other for limited resources.

What this is leading to, unfortunately, is a situation where there is a very small percentage of the population which holds the highest percentage of wealth, and a huge gap between them and the rest of the people in earnings. This type of situation has been proven to destroy a democratic society.

We had the director from the Nat'l Labor Relations Board come and speak at our Rotary club meeting yesterday. The stats he gave concerning union membership pre-Reagan and post-Reagan to present were scarey. Unions came about because workers were powerless. Now, we have the same issue, except due to corporations moving jobs off-shore to gain more profits, it is worse because the jobs that are left are at a premium - people work under worse conditions, with little or no benefits, with few rights, in fear of losing even the low-paying job they have. This type of model cannot support a working democracy.

So, if the 'free market', Rand freaks want to continue their push, and our reps are totally bought off by the rich and powerful, we have a situation where it is absolutely certain our democracy will fail.

I think we just adjust to high unemployment and welfare.

If we can adjust to the idea that a persons self-worth is not determined by having a job, we will be alright (or at least, sane).

Tim, philosophically, I agree that a human being's 'self-worth' should not be tied to having a job, but realistically, we cannot continue as a nation with rising unemployment payments or welfare, and reduced tax base. If the reps are owned by business, they will never pass legislation that makes them ultimately pay for the jobs they take from the American public and place off-shore. And, a public that has no dispensible income will eventually starve business. The whole thing is screwed up - for everyone. It's all for short-terms gains, and ultimately long-term death.

They dont realise that one thing that might happen when democracy fails is the poor and disadvatanged rise up and rebel. That was what happned in Russia, Germany and others in the last century. This one woudl be more serious and would lead to real communism or a dictatorship. But as usual they think they are invencible and cant see the forest for the trees.

Don't try to tell the rest of the world that high unemployment, welfare, and higher taxes are not sustainable, because they know it is.

The key there is 'higher taxes', Tim. And I agree. Although many countries that we consider to be 'socialist' do not have such high unemployment rates as the US. Neither do they have such vast gaps in household wealth, or such vast gaps in salaries between executives and workers. On the whole, the people in such countries believe in a moral public welfare, where it is important to take care of all, regardless of status or income.

We have created our own little crappy world of greed & selfishness here in the US.

These countries also have much better systems of education. In Australia, nobody pays more than $5k/yr for college, full in. And many pay nothing or much less than that. In Germany, college is also free. In Japan, students are payed to go to medical school.

We are simply out-of-kilter with the rest of this world in the area of social responsibility and morality. This country is sick at its very heart with out-of-control capitalism.

In California in the '50s and '60s public education including college was free. In K-12 schools the schools provided paper, pens, pencils, books and all the other supplies. The state colleges and the university were legally barred from charging tuition. Actually that's still true. The call it "fees." The fee/tuition thing is a problem for students who want to receive some government grants since the grants are set up to cover tuition.

It's a bizarre life.

Perhaps the government should change the word 'taxes' to something else, and make them more amenable to the populace. :)

The top income tax bracket during the depression was 79%, in 1950 it was 94%.

The tax cuts in the 1980's have been an utter failure. We chased wild financial bubbles for nearly 30 years. Everyone did, not just the "corporate greed" monsters that run large companies.

I have no problem at all rooting for capitalism, and government regulation of capitalism, at the same time. I wish everyone could.

YOur all making great points......