How Congress let Monsanto off the hook

By Michael Collins
COTO Report

Not many people like the messes Congress makes but everybody should see how they’re made.

This article takes a close look at the legislation just passed by Congress and signed by President Obama allowing the Secretary of Agriculture to issue executive orders that bypass regulations, safety, and science for the purpose of speeding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered seeds (GE) and crops to market.  The way the law is written, Secretary Tom Vilsack can lift restrictions on GMOs for a set period and, it appears, do so without hindrance from the courts.

Understanding the US Financial Crisis, Why Banking Regulations are a Temporary Fix

Part #3 of Understanding Capitalism and Socialism
by Joaquin

With the great financial crisis of 2007-2010 all over except for the screaming and yelling; and the yelling and screaming is over because oil spilled all over it; and with the oil spill all over because someone parked a SUV with toy timers on it in Manhattan; it’s time to understand how the financial crisis was solved; so let’s get started. By the way, aren’t we all glad the financial crisis is over? Well except in Greece and maybe Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and the UK; don’t forget California and other bankrupt states, counties, municipalities, and your parent’s pension; not to mention a giant national debt that is ballooning out of control; but yeah otherwise the financial crisis is over. How do we know its over? Well, just turn on the financial news anywhere and you will hear that the recovery is in full swing except for people having jobs and buying houses. The crisis is so over that it has been over and over. I mean if you Google “housing market has bottomed” you can find out that the housing market has bottomed out constantly since 2006.

The Banking Crisis – Scathing Critique and Real Solutions

Those who should be leading this country, and contributing to its development, have spent the past 25 years joining the parade of looters and predators who have found ways to extract wealth from the middle class and the poor in this country. Numerian

The Public Costs of Not Regulating Products

The Good the Bad and the Ugly in the Dodd Bill

• Real Economy Project PRWatch March 16, 2010

Here are some highlights regarding the 1,300 page bank reform bill released by U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CN) yesterday.

THE GOOD

1) Capital requirements and leveraging requirements to be set by regulators (although some reformers would like these set in law to makes sure they do the job).

2) Creates a council of systemic risk regulators called a Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is generally a good idea. We don’t want to just leave it to the Federal Reserve.

3) Obama’s “Volcker Rule” included, not perfect, but at least it made the cut.

Accounting Fraud Continues to Plague U.S. Economy

By Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger              Care2

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) unveiled his latest financial reform proposal on Monday, and the stakes for the new legislation couldn’t be higher. After consumer groups raised a major ruckus, Dodd has dropped one of his most egregious concessions to the bank lobby—cutting enforcement authority from the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). That’s good news: Without a major regulatory overhaul, the U.S. economy’s destructive boom and bust cycle will start all over again.

We’ve been down this road before. The Enron fiasco should have served as a wake-up call for policymakers, but instead, the weak federal response to Enron’s major fraud helped pave the way for the current economic slump.

Systemic Failures, by Design

designed to fail

Sunday 31 January 2010

by: Mark Montgomery, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Over the past dozen years, the US has experienced a series of dangerous and costly systemic failures throughout our security and regulatory framework. The unfettered bubble in technology, missed opportunities to prevent 9/11 – leading to two ongoing wars, the tragic response to Katrina, the largest financial crisis in history, the Fort Hood massacre and the “underwear bomber” incident on Christmas Day all share one commonality.

In each of these cases, data had been collected by US government agencies that contained a high probability of either entirely preventing or substantially mitigating each event, if only the information had been recognized and acted upon within the window of time allowed by circumstances. In case after case, repeated warnings by recognized experts, sourced internally and externally, were ignored or suppressed.

A Predatory System- The Health Insurance Monopoly

By DON MONKERUD                         Counterpunch

Like pathetic knights of another era jousting at windmills, industry shrills attack health care reform, claiming it “tramples individual liberty” and stifles “free enterprise.”

Far from protecting individual liberty or promoting free enterprise, these forces uphold monopoly control of health care insurance that has a stranglehold on American consumers. And they pay huge sums to control the debate and twist legislation to their advantage.

In Drinking Water, What’s Legal Can Be Poisonous

OMB Watch

In another of The New York Times’ startling articles on the state of U.S. waters, Charles Duhigg reports on the myriad chemicals polluting drinking water supplies and regulators’ inability to manage them.

Dems want to end Health Insurance Co’s monopoly exemption

Should Health Insurance companies continue to hold monopoly control of regional health insurance coverage and also be allowed to cream the young and healthy and deny coverage to everyone else? 

This sounds more like the Mafia than like any “regulated” industry.  But it’s what we have now.

Dems target health industry anti-trust

By DAVID ESPO      October 21, 2009

Top Senate Democrats intend to try to strip the health insurance industry of its exemption from federal antitrust laws, according to congressional officials, the latest evidence of a deepening struggle over President Barack Obama’s effort to overhaul the health care industry.