Lost In The Noise

Superfreak said:
Again.... I did not relinquish him from all responsibility... yes he wrote Gramm-Leach-Biley. But that was one of many bills that created this mess.

The repealment of Glass Steagall was done over time. Initially the first Bush (dem Congress) chipped away at it, then Clinton (Rep Congress) continued chipping away at it both in 1995 (Fair Lending Act) and in 1999 (Gramms bill).

All in the name of more people owning homes. So yes, Gramm was a part of it. But to act like he played a bigger part than any of the other hacks is silly. His bill still had to be voted on in both the House and the Senate....and it still had to be signed into law by the President. Side note... if I remember correctly, they did not have enough votes to make the bill veto proof.

On top of the above, Greenspan and the Fed kept rates insanely low for too long. Lenders and borrowers took advantage and are responsible as well.

So stating that Gramm was largely responsible for this mess is idiotic. He was but a small part in the overall FUBAR of the situation. Note: It should also be noted that his bill... would not have been detrimental had Wall Street done such a piss poor job with the CDO universe.
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For you to continue to insist on arguing against the incredibly plain as fucking day involvement of Phil Gramm in the subprime meltdown in the face of MOUNTAINS of evidence is disappointing my brother. Surely you know better.

Is this a secret?

Foreclosure Phil

Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.

Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.

..... the legislation contained a provision—lobbied for by Enron, a generous contributor to Gramm—that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight, allowing Enron to run rampant, wreck the California electricity market, and cost consumers billions before it collapsed. (For Gramm, Enron was a family affair. Eight years earlier, his wife, Wendy Gramm, as cftc chairwoman, had pushed through a rule excluding Enron's energy futures contracts from government oversight. Wendy later joined the Houston-based company's board, and in the following years her Enron salary and stock income brought between $915,000 and $1.8 million into the Gramm household.)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclosure-phil.html

Take the red pill brother.
 
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uscitizen said:
I find it interesting how republicans seem to be supporting a new tax.

does that mean it is time to bend over and get out the vaseline ?
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Oh, they don't mind taxing me, and those lower on the socio-economic scale than i am, or those a bit higher...just keep your mitts off the top 2 percintile, or "bush's base".
 
Darla said:
It's an attempt to privatize health insurance. It's not hard to understand. It's the exact opposite directon of where most Americans want to go.

It will also hurt the most vulnerable the most, and the middle class, eventually.

I am kind of hoping that it becomes a big deal, because much like SS privatization, which you and SF were also for - the super majority of Americans will fiercely reject this. The dems need to make a big deal out of this. It's a win-win for Obama. Only the financial elite like SF, and the ideologically married to it, like you, will support this.

What's kind of funny is, I don't think you are in quite the pretty financial position SF is in. Wouldn't it be funny if you ended up, a couple of years down the road, losing your insurance because of privatization, and then you, your wife, or your kid got sick, and you were totally fucked, and had to sell your house? Wow, that would be ironic.

SF benefits. You lose. He's smart. You're stupid and vindictive.
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If ad hominem silly attacks and "guesses" of my financial status are all you have, then you argue from a position of weakness. Add that to the fact that each group you pretend to care about and the net benefit they actually get from this program and my description becomes very accurate.

It becomes clear that it bothered you so much that instead of presenting any logic or reason you pretended to know more about my finances than you ever will, and then attempt to get me "angry" through significantly weak insults on my intelligence and then a wish couched in "wouldn't it be ironic".
 
Darla said:
Ok, I see. I don't trust anybody I don't personally know. I can only go by what they say, and I guess it comes down to...hope? :)
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As said by a british writer ..

"I do not trust anyone who answers "hope" and "change" to every hard question. And I have no belief in an "anti-war" candidate who proposes dusty death without end in Afghanistan."

I "hoped" Obama would be a politician with principles and backbone.
 
For those that actually give a shit about the merits of McCain's proposal and would like some analysis from experts on the issue (as opposed to some napkin arithmetic from a guy who just learned of the proposal ten minutes ago and adds his own features to the proposal whenever it suits his needs) you can go here:

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.27.6.w472/DC1

Highlights:

Middle-range estimates suggest that initially this change will have little impact on the number of uninsured people, although within five years this number will likely grow as the value of the tax credit falls relative to rising health care costs. Moving toward a relatively unregulated nongroup market will tend to raise costs, reduce the generosity of benefits, and leave people with fewer consumer protections.
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What is clear from these estimates is that the McCain plan will not enable many more Americans to obtain health insurance--and it certainly will not achieve universal coverage. By our calculations, upward of forty million Americans would be uninsured--and that number would likely grow over time. The estimates described above focus on the initial impact of the plan. Over time, a refundable tax credit would not automatically adjust as health care costs increase--which is quite different from the current tax exclusion of employer premium payments. Thus, the effectiveness of the tax credit in inducing people to buy coverage would inevitably decline over time. Even if the tax credit were indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), if the annual growth in premiums exceeded CPI-measured inflation by 6 percent--as was the case between 1999 and 2007--the value of the credit would be eroded so much that in just five years, five million more people would be uninsured.
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Achieving Senator McCain's vision would radically transform the U.S. health insurance system. His plan would alter the nature, source, and financing of coverage for the nearly 160 million Americans who now receive health insurance through their employers. We estimate that twenty million Americans--about one in every eight people with job-based coverage--would lose their current coverage as a result of the change in the tax treatment of coverage. Initially, this loss of job-based coverage would be offset by an increase in coverage in the nongroup market (although not necessarily for the same individuals). Within five years, however, the net effect of the plan is expected to be a net reduction in coverage relative to what would have been observed if the tax treatment of employer-sponsored coverage remains as it is now. The decline of job-based coverage would force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system--the nongroup market--where cost sharing is high and covered services are limited. Senator McCain's proposal to deregulate this market would mean that people in it would lose protections they now have. These changes would diminish the security of coverage for most Americans, especially those who are not--or someday will not be--in perfect health.
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Damocles said:
If ad hominem silly attacks and "guesses" of my financial status are all you have, then you argue from a position of weakness. Add that to the fact that each group you pretend to care about and the net benefit they actually get from this program and my description becomes very accurate.

It becomes clear that it bothered you so much that instead of presenting any logic or reason you pretended to know more about my finances than you ever will, and then attempt to get me "angry" through significantly weak insults on my intelligence and then a wish couched in "wouldn't it be ironic".
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You know, lately, I know your lips are moving, and you’re typing something, but all I hear is “blah blah blah blah blah”.
 
Dungheap said:
For those that actually give a shit about the merits of McCain's proposal and would like some analysis from experts on the issue (as opposed to some napkin arithmetic from a guy who just learned of the proposal ten minutes ago and adds his own features to the proposal whenever it suits his needs) you can go here:

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.27.6.w472/DC1

Highlights:
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id just max the medical saver account to pay the premium. then take the 5000 credit. sounds like a nice little tax break.
 
Darla said:
You know, lately, I know your lips are moving, and you’re typing something, but all I hear is “blah blah blah blah blah”.
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And you are significantly short on any context. Your reading comprehension level has either significantly decreased or your arguments have no meat because you don't believe them anymore. Either way, when almost any of your posts to me consist of some silly form of ad hominem and nothing else it worries me. What has happened to the strong intelligent woman who used to post with your name?
 
Solitary said:
This was being discussed around the office yesterday.

I cannot believe that he has not been nailed for this. Taxing income is fine, but forcing taxes on those of us who have company paid insurance is pitiful.

Hopefully this will become a hotter issue.
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He's doing it to be fair to people who don't have group insurance, but I honestly think it would make a lot more sense to provide tax breaks to them also. Taxing healthcare just isn't something the government needs to do right now.
 
Dungheap said:
Chap - You're missing a lot of things, most importantly the fact that the tax credit is indexed to inflation whereas your health insurance premiums have rising by double digit percentages since the 1990s. You may break even this year, but next year and the year after than and the year after that you will get hit with higher and higher taxes while the tax credit barely creeps upwards. You'll lose in the end. Myopia is a bitch.
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God you are a tool. You refuse to even look at the numbers. Run them Dung. See that your above post is ridiculous.

"The average annual premium costs for a family with employer-sponsored insurance (including both the employee's and employer's contribution) was $12,106 in 2007, and it was $4,479 for a single person, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Annual premiums for nongroup coverage (i.e., individually purchased plans) vary widely, currently ranging from $1,163 to $5,090 for singles, and $2,325 to $9,201 for family coverage. "

So take the averages.... assume the employer is paying half....

1) for a family.... $12.1k... taxed on 6.05k... taxes would be $1680 assuming you are in the 28% bracket. You get $5000 back in the rebate.

2) Now assume that the employer continues to pay half, the employee half...

If you took healthcare costs and assume they went up by 10% per year in ten years you would have healthcare costs of $31,000. Half of that would be 15.5k, which you would be taxed on. In the 28% bracket, that equates to $4340. Which is STILL BELOW the $5000 rebate.... WITHOUT even adjusting the rebate for inflation.

So tell me Dung.... How can you argue with the ACTUAL numbers????

and all of this assumes that nothing is done in ten years to combat rising healthcare costs.
 
hmm something else to consider is the consequences of this on AMT and SSI taxes. Could be worse then it seems on the surface.
 
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