US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8096

On July 15 2017 07:38 mozoku wrote:

The TARP (toxic asset relief program) funds were bailout funds I was talking about. They repaid those with interest. The Fed also made a boatload of money of TARP iirc (don't remember the details off the top of my head), which eventually should flow back to taxpayers anyway.

There have been some fairly robust…discussions about getting the Republican National Committee to pay for some of the president’s legal bills. I think that’s a hard sell in some ways to the RNC. They have their own things they want to pay for. But that shows you that there’s a lot of competing interests, let’s say, in how this gets resolved and who pays for what. The legal bills are going to be huge, no question.”

On July 15 2017 07:38 mozoku wrote:
Nobody is advocating for going back to 2007-style regulations. Not even the major investment banks. But the stress tests on small banks, for example, are an utter joke and a huge costs for banks. I used to run some stress tests at the bank I worked for. The regulators they brought in to examine predictive modeling problems didn't include a single quant/dude with a quantitative degree. They brought in like 12 MBAs from top B-Schools. Do you know how expensive MBAs from top B-Schools are? They weren't even capable of doing the job. They came in, gave us incorrect statistical advice, and then told us we'd be sanctioned if we didn't follow it. This year, the bank's models don't even make sense.

Or how about the fact that banks are required to hold so much capital for risky loans these days, that they aren't even profitable to make? Know who asks for risky loans? Low-income, minorities, and other disadvantaged groups. The "progressive" policies actively promote inequality by limiting credit to people who need it.

Here's another banking regulation gem: banks aren't allowed to ask for race/ethnicity on loan applications. At the same time, they're required to prove to regulators that they're lending adequate amount to different races. It's a total contradiction. Curious how our bank resolved it? We had a guy sit down, look at an applicant's name, and try to guess what race the applicant was from his name (which is arguably racist in of itself lol). Literally. The regulators were totally okay with this process as well, because it's pretty much the best you can do given the contradictory set of regulations that are out there. Is it effective? Nobody even knows. Stories like this go on and on in banking.

Meanwhile, Elisabeth Warren (who's never worked in the private sector, let alone banking/finance) panders to Leftist rage over banks for political purposes. And they eat it right up.

Dodd-Frank is probably preferable to 2007, but it's a majorly flawed piece of regulation that isn't being reformed because it's being exploited for political purpose by Democrats.

On July 15 2017 08:43 KwarK wrote:
Are you guys from the alternate reality in which banking hasn't been going crazy since 2008? Cause I certainly wouldn't use the words "stalled out" to describe the banking system in this time line.

On July 15 2017 06:27 a_flayer wrote:
Glenn Greenwald makes an interesting whataboutism case:

The Steele dossier that contained incriminating information about Trump was partially obtained from Russian Kremlin-associated figures, and also Ukrainian government officials. In essence, the Democrats paid Steele to collect information from foreign agents who may have been looking to interfere in the US elections to help HRC get elected over Trump.

It obviously doesn't excuse Juniors meeting, but should the Democrats who paid Steele to do that be prosecuted now just like Junior ought to be, if the act of attempting to obtain incriminating information from foreign entities is indeed illegal? I mean, if anything, the Steele dossier was a more successful attempt to do this (regardless of the accuracy of the informatoin), rather than the apparently failed attempt of Junior which seemed to have yielding nothing (as far as we know right now).

How do these two things compare to one another, exactly?

WASHINGTON — There's one less hurdle for a new U.S. military branch focused on space after an amendment meant to derail it failed Wednesday to get approval from the House Rules Committee for a public floor debate.

The outcome was a loss for the White House, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other opponents who claim a new "Space Corps" equals more bureaucracy, but it was a win for lawmakers who warn the Air Force must be reorganized to catch up with China and Russia’s militarization of space. Space has become critical for the U.S. military with satellites used for navigation, protected communications, missile warning, surveillance and intelligence collection.

Plans for the new Space Corps were spearheaded by House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., with the support of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. The HASC voted 60-1 last month to approve the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which contains the Space Corps legislative language.

House Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, had waged a public push and lobbying effort to replace the Space Corps language with orders for a study on whether a new branch is necessary. Mattis and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson had each written letters backing him, and the White House listed it among two dozen NDAA provisions it opposes.

Congressional aides said late Wednesday the House Rules Committee, led by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, did not deem the amendment in order, and it did not receive an individual up-or-down vote. After Turner, Rogers and Cooper each pleaded their cases in a public hearing, the decision appears to have been made quietly.

The HASC-passed NDAA would direct the Defense Department to establish a Space Corps by Jan. 1, 2019. The Space Corps would fall under the Department of the Air Force but operate as an independent service, similar to the Marine Corps’ relationship to the Department of the Navy.

The corps would be responsible for space acquisition programs and led by its own chief of staff, however other services would still be permitted to procure their own user terminals. It would also be responsible for organizing, training and equipping space forces.

Turner and others had argued such sweeping upheaval to the military’s space enterprise could be a mistake and that change should be approached more slowly and methodically. He told reporters early Wednesday he hoped a July 11 letter from Mattis voicing support for the amendment would help.

“The Armed Services Committee has not held any hearings on information about the Space Corps. There are no estimates of cost. The administration, the Department of Defense are opposed,” Turner said. “While they work for increased readiness and refocus on modernization, restructuring the bureaucracy to the great extent of creating another service branch is extreme.”

Mattis, in his letter, unequivocally stated his opposition to the Space Corps, saying its formation would add overhead and could further grow the budget.

“At a time when we are trying to integrate the Department’s joint warfighting functions, I do not wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations vice an integrated one we’re constructing under our current approach,” Mattis wrote.

Rogers and Cooper testified together before the House Rules Committee on Wednesday to emphasize their proposal’s bipartisan support and the dire need to prioritize space as its own domain.

Rogers argued the path ahead would actually be fairly deliberative. The Air Force would have six months after the bill's passage to create its own plan, teeing up further congressional action to move forward or reverse as necessary. Even sooner, there would be a series of classified and open hearings on the next steps, he said.

“We encourage you to come, particularly to the classified hearings to see our capabilities and our adversaries’ — it is shocking what’s happened,” Rogers told the House Rules Committee. “Both China and Russia have already reorganized space.”

Rogers argued the Air Force is resisting the move in part because its space accounts are a “money pot,” which service leaders have raided for years to pay for air-domain needs.

“If we create a separate corps, the money goes to a separate corps, and that’s why the fighter pilots [who are] general officers are opposed to it,” Rogers said.

Although Turner acknowledged the military has faced difficulties in executing space programs, he argued that House lawmakers have not adequately laid out the organization and functions of the Space Corps, or even how much forming it would cost.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein has also cautioned against forming a Space Corps. In May, he told lawmakers that the Air Force needs to focus on integrating the space enterprise with other war-fighting functions and domains. Creating a stovepiped space organization outside that of the major services could take the military further from that goal.

“Anything that separates space and makes it unique and different, relative to all of the war-fighting missions that we perform that are reliant on space, I don't think believe that will move us in the right direction at this time,” Goldfein said.

On July 15 2017 09:17 mozoku wrote:

In what way has it been going crazy? Profits are high at the Big 5, but that's about it. The Economist hardly paints a rosy picture. Return on equity has been below their cost of capital.

https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21721503-though-effects-financial-crisis-2007-08-are-still-reverberating-banks-are

Also keep in mind that regulations and the post-crisis environment affects large and small banks asymmetrically. Low interest rates (not regulators' fault) and high capital requirements hit traditional community lending much harder than the more diversified large investment banks (which the Left supposedly hates). Community banks are consolidating at a record pace.

Your point is a red herring anyway. Even if we assume banks are going crazy, that doesn't mean that they aren't overburdened by regulations. Opportunity costs are a thing.

On July 15 2017 09:54 GreenHorizons wrote:


Did anyone respond to this and I just missed it?

That's one reason why I always ask what it is about this story that people are actually upset about. It's changed over time for sure.

Bungled collusion is still collusion
By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer
July 13 at 7:51 PM
The Russia scandal has entered a new phase, and there’s no going back.

For six months, the White House claimed that this scandal was nothing more than innuendo about Trump campaign collusion with Russia in meddling in the 2016 election. Innuendo for which no concrete evidence had been produced.

Yes, there were several meetings with Russian officials, some only belatedly disclosed. But that is circumstantial evidence at best. Meetings tell you nothing unless you know what happened in them. We didn’t. Some of these were casual encounters in large groups, like the famous July 2016 Kislyak-Sessions exchange of pleasantries at the Republican National Convention. Big deal.

I was puzzled. Lots of coverup, but where was the crime? Not even a third-rate burglary. For six months, smoke without fire. Yes, President Trump himself was acting very defensively, as if he were hiding something. But no one ever produced the something.

My view was: Collusion? I just don’t see it. But I’m open to empirical evidence. Show me.


The Post’s Ruth Marcus explains why in Donald Trump Jr. is in legal jeopardy. Hint: stupidity is not a legal defense. (Adriana Usero, Kate Woodsome/The Washington Post)
The evidence is now shown. This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an email chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself. A British go-between writes that there’s a Russian government effort to help Trump Sr. win the election, and as part of that effort he proposes a meeting with a “Russian government attorney” possessing damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Moreover, the Kremlin is willing to share troves of incriminating documents from the Crown Prosecutor. (Error: Britain has a Crown Prosecutor. Russia has a Prosecutor General.)

Donald Jr. emails back. “I love it.” Fatal words.

Once you’ve said “I’m in,” it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods. What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were forwarded the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended.

“It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame,” Donald Jr. told Sean Hannity. A shame? On the contrary, a stroke of luck. Had the lawyer real stuff to deliver, Donald Jr. and the others would be in far deeper legal trouble. It turned out to be incompetent collusion, amateur collusion, comically failed collusion. That does not erase the fact that three top Trump campaign officials were ready to play.

It may turn out that they did later collaborate more fruitfully. We don’t know. But even if nothing else is found, the evidence is damning.

It’s rather pathetic to hear Trump apologists protesting that it’s no big deal because we Americans are always intervening in other people’s elections, and they in ours. You don’t have to go back to the ’40s and ’50s when the CIA intervened in France and Italy to keep the communists from coming to power. What about the Obama administration’s blatant interference to try to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in the latest Israeli election? One might even add the work of groups supported by the U.S. during Russian parliamentary elections — the very origin of Vladimir Putin’s deep animus toward Clinton, then secretary of state, whom he accuses of having orchestrated the opposition.

This defense is pathetic for two reasons. First, have the Trumpites not been telling us for six months that no collusion ever happened? And now they say: Sure it happened. So what? Everyone does it.

What’s left of your credibility when you make such a casual about-face?

Second, no, not everyone does it. It’s one thing to be open to opposition research dug up in Indiana. But not dirt from Russia, a hostile foreign power that has repeatedly invaded its neighbors (Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine), that buzzes our planes and ships in international waters, that opposes our every move and objective around the globe. Just last week the Kremlin killed additional U.N. sanctions we were looking to impose on North Korea for its ICBM test.

There is no statute against helping a foreign hostile power meddle in an American election. What Donald Jr. — and Kushner and Manafort — did may not be criminal. But it is not merely stupid. It is also deeply wrong, a fundamental violation of any code of civic honor.

I leave it to the lawyers to adjudicate the legalities of unconsummated collusion. But you don’t need a lawyer to see that the Trump defense — collusion as a desperate Democratic fiction designed to explain away a lost election — is now officially dead.

On July 15 2017 10:20 IgnE wrote:


that's how capitalism works. the big guy wins and stomps out the little guys

On July 15 2017 10:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Remember what people said Trump Jr. and anyone involved in that meeting should have done?

Because that's what happened with Steele's findings. People who were involved delivered them to the FBI.

On July 15 2017 11:19 Wulfey_LA wrote:
DJT/DonJR statement on the infamous meeting last week. Every word a lie. Why do people still spin for Trump when he puts lies in their mouths?

https://twitter.com/DafnaLinzer/status/885966488015966208