Kanjorski admits Administration dishonest about Financial Reform

Posted on Youtube by Montagnaman:

Congressan Paul Kanjorski at a FINRA event predicts dishonesty from the Obama Administration once Financial Reform is passed into law. He admits it will not prevent another crisis and talks about how he is looking forward to taking down the first company that poses a "systemic risk" as determined by the federal government regulators. Of course no mention of Fannie or Freddie.


Will he call this guy a "nut with a recorder"?

A Bank Overhaul Too Big To Hail- A Wall Street Commentary

The local media has been playing up Paul Kanjorski's role in bank reform. It's a love fest that is smack dab out of Ed Mitchell's playbook. In an effort to educate the people of PA's 11th Congressional district I am publishing in full an article by Peter Eavis that was printed in the Wall Street Journal, Saturday/Sunday, June 26-27, 2010. It paints a much different picture.

In democracies, the people are said to get the laws they deserve. But if American taxpayers had formulated a financial-overhaul bill, it likely would have looked very different from what will be known as the Dodd-Frank Act.

Of course, Congress and powerful interests always water down legislation to meet their own ends. The outcome for financial overhaul, however, is particularly relevant for taxpayers who spent and pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the system.

The act's biggest failing: It does little to solve the too-big-to-fail problem that caused such trouble in the crisis. If any of the 10 largest banks, whose $10.4 trillion in assets are equivalent to nearly 80% of gross domestic product, hit serious trouble, the government would have to step in to prevent a systemic meltdown.

True, the overhaul tries to protect taxpayers in rescues, but it also enshrines the bailout architecture, and thus the too-big-to-fail distortions.

There was never any real chance that bank size would be reduced to the point where they would be made small enough to fail. But there was some hope that parts of the overhaul—like the "Volcker rule," which focused on scaling back proprietary trading, and the Blanche Lincoln amendment, which aimed to force derivatives-trading risk out of federally insured lenders—would at least cut banks' riskiest activities. But both Volcker and Lincoln were softened in the face of lobbying.

The bill leaves much of the responsibility for avoiding further banking crises on regulators. Although the banking system and economy became unstable in part under the Federal Reserve's oversight, the central bank has retained huge responsibilities under the overhaul. How it and other watchdogs interpret the new rules and how proactively they use their new powers to head off problems will decide how safe the system really is.

An example of this is derivatives. The way to make sure banks hold sufficient capital against these instruments is to get as many as possible traded through clearinghouses and on exchanges. The banks likely will resist that, arguing many of their trades are nonstandard and don't qualify for clearing. Or they may claim the trades are being used to hedge their own risks, and therefore can be kept out of the separately capitalized affiliates resulting from the Lincoln amendment.

It is in those gray areas, and others such as defining what constitutes proprietary trading, that regulators will have to stand firm. Given how critical the performance of regulators is to making the overhaul work, someone also needs to make sure the Fed and other bodies are doing their job.

Congress is well-placed for that task, and, after failing to serve up a first-rate overhaul, it needs to deliver.

Paul Kanjorski Is So Out Of Touch

Bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures are up in every county he represents but this is what he has to say about the economy.




"We are helluva alot better off as a country and as an economy than we have ever been in the history of mankind"

Kanjorski And Banker's Row- How He Owes Wall Street

Obama Abandons Kanjorski Plan

On the Huffington Post Paul Kanjorski wrote this column about "Too Big To Fail" back in November, 2009.

"Too big to fail" must die. I am preparing legislation to empower federal regulators to rein in and dismantle financial firms that are so large, inter-connected, or risky that their collapse would put at risk the entire American economic system, even if those firms currently appear to be well-capitalized and healthy. Never again should American taxpayers have to bail out high-flying financiers when their risky bets go sour.

The economic meltdown we narrowly averted last year rightfully convinced the American people that we need to re-examine the fundamental structure of our financial system. Wall Street financiers, however, seem to think that -- now that they are basically stable thanks to American tax dollars that kept them afloat during the worst of the crisis -- they can just go back to business as usual.

Evidently Paul Kanjorski with all his senority couldn't convince his boss. Today President Obama urged Senate Democrats according to this Fox News report to nix the $50 billion dollar fund designed to finance the liquidation of a big financial institution facing collapse, a victory for Senate Republicans opposed to government-supervised and government-funded corporate bailouts.

"The fund was not in our original proposal we announced almost a year ago and we don't feel it is an essential part of final legislation," a senior administration source told Fox. "The President will only sign a bill if it passes the test of putting an end to bailouts."

There is one thing missing in the Fox News article. That would be Paul Kanjorski's name. Evidently his claims to the public aren't as powerful as he wants us to believe. They are more powerful in his own head. I guess Obama no longer believes Kanjorski is the right team member for his plans.

Taxpayers Taken Again

How many Czars are in the United States Government at this time? Isn't that a term really associated with Russia? Well, here's a story about a taxpayer bailout of a bank that benefited Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. And no Rick Santorum had nothing to do with it

What does a $100 million dollar bailout get you? Ask Arthur Rooney II. Its a $135,000 lease on a luxury box at Heinz Field. Thank the top Treasury officials.

To be fair which is something the Democrats forgot

Luxury perks and big bonuses enjoyed by the recipients of massive government bailout programs have struck a raw nerve with some taxpayer groups, and have become a rallying cry among tea-party activists. But First National Bank's executives say the company's Steelers tickets should not be lumped in with other recent episodes.

Steve Gurgovits, the Chairman and CEO of First National Bank, told ABC News Tuesday that he understands why such an expense might look bad to the American public, but he wanted to make clear the bank spent none of the taxpayer funds – issued under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) during the final days of the Bush administration – on pricey stadium seats.

In fact, he said, the bank never touched the taxpayer money. It accepted the funds as a backstop in case the economy tanked, but conditions never got so bad that the bank actually needed them. FNB "paid back every penny of interest and principle" last September, Gurgovits said.

As for the Heinz Stadium luxury suite, Gurgovits said the company was partway into a 10-year lease – a lease it signed before Rooney joined the bank's board.

In the end one wonders how you separate TARP money that is not needed when you decided to accept it.