As long as the music's playing, you got to dance.
In case you were wondering, here’s some more, ah, how shall we describe it, context, to explain just what prompted Ohio Republican John Boehner to do his cheerleading bit for the ABA. From truthout:
All told, the financial services industry spent $500 million on lobbying in 2009. In their respective careers, Boehner has received $3.4 million from the financial services industry, while (Richard) Shelby has received $5.2 million, which is $2.2 million more than he’s received from any other industry.
That is why this reform bill is going to be gutted, and that is why the regulatory framework was systematically gutted over the past decade or so. Because the banking industry spent money, a lot of money, in Washington to make sure it happened.
Forget regulatory capture. The biggest problem in this nation today is political capture.
I’m not going to get into the tit-for-tat responses from Larry Summers and Barney Frank; they’ve got their own hypocrisies to deal with. But the other revealing comment to come out of the conference came from the aforementioned Richard Shelby of Alabama. When asked by the bankers (who apparently are such a milquetoast group they can’t “stand up” to Senate staffers,) what they could do to help move the agenda, he said “What you can do is elect more Republicans to the U.S. Senate, that would help immensely.”
Nothing about reforming their industry so that the entire nation doesn’t have to go through another near-death experience, and eight million people don’t get thrown out of work. Nothing about cleaning up their accounting practices so there isn’t another Lehman-type scandal. Nothing about running, honest, profitable businesses. Nothing about running capitalism into the ground. Nothing about any of that. Elect more Republicans, that’s it.
This is all just a game to them.
