davis_square | Capuano's heated words to 8 bank CEOs

About time someone went Masshole on those bastards!

Do you mean it's about time someone accused them of doing something illegal, which the accuser themselves MADE legal?

I see some confusion between what is legal with what is right. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act made a lot of things legal and removed regulation and oversight. However, given the current mess I would like to think we can all agree that the investments these folks made were epically wrong. Just because what they did was legal doesn’t make them blameless.

But, see, Mikey C. was saying it SHOULD be illegal, when he helped make it legal.

He voted for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000. Don't think he is allowed to change his mind?

Edited 2009-02-12 18:22 (UTC)

Um, sorry, he voted for it in 2000.

This was also the Act that created the Enron loophole.

The date was corrected (after you read it but before you replied.) Personally I'm happy Capuano got angry at these guys, the deserve public rebuke. As my Representative Capuano can do that on my behalf.

I'd be happier if he'd voted against this thing back in 2000. But I'd rather him change his mind now than not. Perhaps someone can run against him in the next election on a platform of never changing their mind (I think we had someone like that in the White House the last 8 years).

So, you don't think people should be able to change their minds.

And you don't think people who made an error in the past should be able to do their job correctly today.

Brilliant.

I think he needs to be more intellectually honest.

"I think this stuff should be illegal" is hyperbole, when he helped make it legal.

It's posturing, because he hope no one will catch him in his two faced-ness

So you are against hyperbole? *puzzles*

And as Cos pointed out later in the thread saying Capuano helped make this legal isn't exactly "intellectually honest" either.

Edited 2009-02-12 19:02 (UTC)

which, if you look at when I posted that which I posted, Cos hadn't yet posted what he did.

What Cos posted was true long before he posted it, even if neither of us knew it.

the truthiness of what Cos pointed out isn't the issue.

You're pointing out that my statement about Capuano is intellectually dishonest presupposes I knew what Cos was pointing out - otherwise, I was merely ignorant of that situation.

The point I've been making is that Capuano was justified for rhetorically attacking the CEOs. I presume you now agree.

Saying "Capuano helped make this legal" is still incorrect. Though I will concede the phrase "intellectually honest" implied deception when the cause was ignorance.

I think the CEO's are dirtbags who justified their huge salaries by saying "look at all the risks we take! We deserve big payouts" and now they aren't willing to face the consequences of their risk, they're passing off the moral hazard.

I think that the legislation was crookeder than a dog's hind leg, and I wish the system weren't gamed such that these things call happen.

But, I do think that if Capuano's going to lambaste the CEO's, he should look at the sort of things that allowed them to happen, all of Congress should, and admit their part in it.

That better?

For why any CEO should make more than the US President. The US President is the person who takes the most risks and has the most responsibilities of everybody.

There's no justification for anyone but the people who pay a CEO to determine how much they should make, IMO.

So you want congress to make these kind of things illegal. But you only want people without sin (or have gone through public confession) to speak out. I don't think you can have both of those.

funny, we seem to require it of cabinet level appointees.

Which makes my point. =)

Capuano voted for the deregulation legislation that caused this financial mess. Most of them did. As most Congresspeople, he just plays outraged and shocked for the masses. Frankly, I think that all Congresspeople who voted for this kind of financial deregulation should be forced to step down, at minimum.

this.

Have you read the bill? A quick search didn't lead me to any obvious results. What else was in it?

It should be a requirement that each bill deal strictly with one issues. The bill in questions was named Making Appropriations for Labor, Health and Human Services for Fiscal Year 2001 - how does that have ANYTHING to do with CDO's in particular or the regulation of banks in the broader sense?

With every bill so laden with crap, I think it's impossible to vote on one thing without also voting for a few things you don't really like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000

Sure, it's very complex to the layman. But so is pretty much anything highly specialized (e.g., critical details of most scientific papers are totally beyond non-scientists in the field). But these people are paid to read them. Or if they don't read them they are supposed to have people working for them who read them and report back to them.

If we're talking about the CFMA of 2000, saying that "Capuano voted for it" is very misleading. That act was snuck through by the Republican leadership of the house, bypassing all normal processes. It didn't go through committee, it was never debated, and it was never voted on. Rather, the House Republican leadership incorporated it by reference, rather late in the process, into the 2000 omnibus budget legislation. If members of Congress voted against every budget that included something they disagreed with, no budget would ever have a ghost of a chance of passing and the government would completely stop working.

When the House leadership uses their position to put members of Congress in a situation like this, they may or may not be abusing their power, depending on how substantive their addition is. In this case, it was clearly significant, and should have gone through committee as a separate bill or been presented as an amendment to be debated and voted on.

But we have no way to determine or state whether any particular member of the House supported or opposed this measure, or "voted" for or against it, except their word.

OK, I remember they pushed it in the middle of the night and Gramm was one of the main architects.

thank you for the clarification.

"...all Congresspeople who voted for this kind of financial deregulation should be forced to step down, at minimum."
What a delicous thought......we could clear out the House and the Senate in one fell swoop!!
I think they add things into random bills specifically so that people won't know they're in there (have you seen any of the lists being circulated with some of the things they've included in the so-called 'stimulus' bill?). And you're unfortunately being naive if you think they read the bills before voting. Most of them don't. It's all a game, and it's called 'you scratch my back, I'll scrath yours....and screw the taxpayers in the process!'

He did have one substantive comment in all the rhetoric... "I have no money in your banks." (I hope its true.) We do have some leverage in the situation.

Capuano's heated words to 8 bank CEOs

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There is absolutely no justification

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