Sign on dotted line

(Via Barry Ritholtz) I don’t usually sign petitions, but one that I decided to sign onto was on financial reform. This should be beyond politics, but it’s going to take a major rising up by the citizenry to make the GOP STFU and legislate. I urge you to sign on to the following petition, which says in part:

Dear Senators Reid and McConnell:

Nineteen months after the most devastating financial crisis since the Great Depression, our financial system remains at risk. Neither the bill passed earlier this year by the House, nor the one currently under consideration in the Senate would have prevented the crisis. Without serious restructuring, they will not prevent a future crisis.

Sound financial markets are the bedrock of a strong economy. Over the last decade, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, our financial sector moved away from core market principles – transparency, competition, free flow of information and the essential discipline of failure – that allowed the US economy to thrive. Restoring the integrity of our financial markets and providing the foundation for economic recovery, requires re-committing to these principles.

Among the signers are people like Bob Reich and Dean Baker, so you know it’s not from industry, but there are a lot of centrists and financial people, too. One of the key names in getting me to sign on is William Black (Associate Prof. of Economics and Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City). From what I have seen, he is an incredibly talented, conscientious, and tenacious guy. If he thinks that this is worth signing, it’s worth signing.

PS: Jane has more on Bill Black here.

Okay, Help Me Out Here

So far, we’ve been told by the Serious People that:

– Reconciliation is bad when it’s used to pass HCR with a public option

– Reconciliation is bad when it’s used to pass budgets, which is what it was expressly designed to do

– Reconciliation is GOOD when it’s used to ram through an HCR bill without a public option but with goodies for the health and insurance industries that are so rich that it’s causing them to continue their recently-enacted policy of giving far more to Democrats than to their historical allies in the GOP.

Have I got that right?

Just checking.

UPDATE: Well, that was a fast turnaround. Looks like reconciliation will be used after all.

CAF’s “Virtual Summit on Fiscal and Economic Responsibility for People Who Did Not Wreck the Economy”

As you likely know, billionaire Wall Streeter Pete Peterson, he who has essentially bought into (or off) the Washington Post with offers of free content, is trying to use bizarre and bogus propaganda like his film “IOUSA” to scare Americans into cutting programs like Social Security and turning over their treasuries to himself and his brokerage-firm and hedge-fund buddies. Peterson and his fellow travelers over at the Concord Coalition have been at this for so long and so insistently that they’ve managed to cow President Obama into giving them free publicity for their 04/28/10 “Fiscal Summit” bullpucky in the form of a “White House debt commission”, whose first official meeting is a week from today.

Fortunately, we can work to cut through the din created by even Peterson’s platinum megaphone. Today is the start of the Campaign for America’s Future’s “Virtual Summit on Fiscal and Economic Responsibility for People Who Did Not Wreck the Economy“.

This is one enterprise that Pete Peterson does not control. The people whose hinky and “creative” actions on Wall Street have trashed life on Main Street are nowhere to be found here.

Bookmark http://www.ourfuture.org/virtualsummit and spread the word. Let’s frame this before they can.