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Republicans have made quite the show of disparaging the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, calling for its repeal, refusing to provide regulators with the funds to implement it, and blocking nominees for key regulatory positions. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) took the latest step in that campaign yesterday, introducing a bill that would repeal an important Dodd-Frank safeguard for the financial system.

One of the key factors that led to the housing bubble’s boom and bust was the ability of subprime mortgage lenders to make a loan and then turn around and sell the entire loan to Wall Street. As the Center for Public Integrity wrote, “lenders were selling their loans to Wall Street, so they wouldn’t be left holding the deed in the event of a foreclosure. In a financial version of hot potato, they could make bad loans and just pass them along.” This fueled a dramatic decline in lending standards and gave subprime lenders every incentive to push loans onto people, since the lenders could divorce themselves from all the risk associated with a loan that didn’t pan out.

Dodd-Frank requires that lenders retain at least five percent of their loans, so that they have some “skin in the game.” Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee — following Financial Service Committee Spencer Bachus’ (R-AL) call to “serve the banks” — want to the repeal that requirement:

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The U.S. Department of Labor is joining forces with Facebook and education and employer organizations to provide crucial employment resources to job seekers through the use of social networks.

A new Facebook Social Jobs Partnership page (click here) highlights available training programs, educational opportunities and job search resources. Also Facebook has made a commitment to drive traffic to the page through targeted online public service announcements that will appear to users in geographic areas experiencing high unemployment.

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis says:

Linking American job seekers with the resources they need to get back to work is a top priority of the Obama administration and my department. By leveraging the power of the social Web, this initiative will provide immediate, meaningful and ready-to-use information for job seekers and employers, and a modern platform to better connect them.

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Who was looking at the numbers? Who was minding the store? These were the questions I was asking myself back in the fall of 2007, when the sub-prime mortgage crisis began.

I was questioning and focusing on the mortgage products that were the root causes, the ARM (Adjustable Rate Mortgage) and the Sub-prime (no documentation).

If these were the reasons for the default tsunami, begun in 2006-2007, why wasn’t someone, anyone, in the know (i.e. Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan), looking at the individual mortgage products to see if they were indeed based on truthful, fact-based documents.

In the 90′s, when I took a course to become a certified loan officer, I asked my instructor, “What was the historical breakdown of all approved mortgage products.” He stated: Fixed rate – 80%; Jumbo – 10%; ARM/Sub-prime – 10%. In 2000. the Arm/Sub-prime was 17% of the total and in 2005, the ARM/Sub-prime was up to 44%.

A deviant trend had been established in the last decade without any logical reason. If any regulator had bothered to investigate, they would have found the answer – rampant fraud.

In January 28, 2008, I read a small article in the Wall Street Journal about the due diligence (quality control) in the mortgage business, of companies that verify the data and documents of the approved mortgage application. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had gained the cooperation and testimony of Clayton Holdings (founded in 2005; Shelton, Conn.), a due diligence company for the investment bankers, in a criminal investigation to determine the depth of the fraud perpetrated. They did. Another company, Watterson-Prime (Bellevue , Wash.) was also under investigation.

If someone, anyone in authority, had bothered to see and investigate the aberrant trend of approved mortgage products, the sub-prime mortgage crisis would have been stopped in its tracks in June 2006.

Warren Nystrom
Swisshelm Park, Pa.

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Florida Gov. Rick Scott wants to cheat the families of his state out of $140 million in health insurance rebates. If Scott gets his way, it could harm consumers across the country.

Ripping off consumers and the health care system isn’t new to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. He got rich leading a hospital company that paid a record $1.7 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties to the Justice Department for systematically defrauding federal health care programs. Scott went on to lead a high-profile campaign against health reform backed by the infamous right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers, and Scott used that campaign as a springboard to the governorship.

Now Scott wants his state to be exempted from federal rules that would require insurance companies to send $140 million in premium rebates to families over the next three years. Enter the big winners, the health insurance companies that will get the money instead of Florida’s hard-working families.

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted last year, health insurers that fail to spend at least 80% of your premiums on actual health services must give the difference back to consumers.This is one of the best and possibly least known provisions in health care reform. It requires insurance companies to become more efficient and keep less money for profits and CEO salaries. It says that people paying premiums should get more value for their money.

The goal of the rule isn’t to force companies to pay consumer rebates, it’s to hold insurance companies accountable and get them to change their behavior. But if they don’t, they’re supposed to pay, and they shouldn’t get off the hook just because they like their profits more than the new law. They should not be rewarded for failing to meet a basic standard because they can get politicians like Scott to take their side.

And let’s not forget the most important thing: While insurance companies are making record profits, struggling families are desperate for relief. The people of Florida need the $140 million they’re owed. But consumers won’t get their money if Rick Scott gets his way. The Republican governor — who’s been doing everything in his power to thwart implementation of the ACA — has been shamelessly trying to manipulate the law to pad the pockets of a private health insurance industry that will collect $934 billion in premiums this year. (more…)

After Oakland police critically injured peacefully-demonstrating 24-year-old Iraq veteran Scott Olson, Occupy Oakland called for a general strike on Wednesday, Nov. 2.

House Republicans took the government to the brink of shutdown last spring by demanding across-the-board budget cuts to many vital programs. Instead of focusing on job creation, as Americans wanted them to, the GOP turned its attention to slashing funds for programs that funded assistance for women and children, local law enforcement, the social safety net, environmental protections, and many other programs they deemed as either too expensive or unnecessary. Worse, when challenged on why they hadn’t made the effort to tackle high unemployment, Republicans insisted that their slash-and-burn budget cuts were meant to create jobs.

Not all of those cuts made it through, but the GOP succeeded in passing massive spending reductions as part of a continuing resolution that kept the government operating. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress’ Scott Lilly, those cuts didn’t result in the job creating boon Republicans insisted would follow. Instead, it has done just the opposite, as those cuts will result in the destruction of roughly 370,000 jobs.

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AFL-CIO decries proposed cuts to social safety net programs — especially while the super-wealthy and highly-profitable corporations are not paying their fair share.

Last Friday, the Social Security Administration released its figures on how much money Americans made in 2010 from wages, salaries, and tips (but not from capital gains, dividends or rents). Turns out that the 150,398,796 Americans for whom employers issued W-2 forms made just over $6 trillion in net compensation. If you calculate the raw mean average, that comes out to $39,959.30 per worker. But 66 percent of wage earners actually made less than that (or that amount exactly)—which means, the high level of pay for upper-income workers produced a much higher mean average than the average American worker actually makes. The median wage—the dollar amount that 50 percent of wage earners made more than, and 50 percent made less than—was $26,363.55. Twenty-six thousand bucks is what the average American worker makes on the job. That’s right in line with the figures for median household income, which hover around $49,000 once you total the income for everyone at home who has a job.

To be sure, once you allow for the income that people don’t report, or that they make on investments, the income level may rise a bit, even though the vast majority of Americans don’t have significant investments. If the minimum wage were higher, and indexed; if the rate of private sector unionization hadn’t been battered down to its current 7 percent; if manufacturing hadn’t shrunk to 11 percent of the GDP, employing less than 10 percent of the work force; if we hadn’t offshored our industry to China and stood idly by as wages in the States declined accordingly – if we had done any of the things that could have preserved our once-vibrant middle class, then that figure would be higher than 26 thou. But we didn’t and it ain’t. (more…)

A 24-year-old, peacefully demonstrating Iraq Veteran was critically injured when Oakland, Calif. police attacked Occupy Oakland activists. Without microphones, demonstrators repeat the witnesses’ words so everyone can hear the account.

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