UBS to Reveal Tax Evaders

In one headline, the U.S. just increased tax revenue during a recession…and you can bet it was under the gun from the Obama administration to do just that.

As the linked article states, Swiss Bank (UBS) is going to reveal tax evaders. There are going to be some big names who come out on this one except for possibly those that were paid to let them break the law for so long.

Speaking of Lobbyists.  As I’ve discussed here before, the biggest one of all is John McCain’s former economic adviser, the person who is mainly to blame for the housing crisis as he wrote the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act that repealed the regulation of Wall Street and mortage banking…your favorite UBS lobbyist and mine…Phil Gramm. Did I mention his wife was on the board of Enron? She took the seat there after Enron lobbied her in her previous job on the Commodities Futures Trading Commision…after she, of course, exempted them from regulation with the help of her husband sponsoring the “Enron Loophole” bill…the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

THIS is how you take back a country…shame the criminals…and take back some of their loot.

Phil Gramm Bio

Wendy Lee Gramm bio

Which one of these Gramms led to the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars?

The answer is both.

Who do McCain, Palin, and CNN think they are fooling?

We have a man running as the republican candidate who has spent a lifetime fighting for deregulation of Wall Street and has hired 60 lobbyists to run his campaign to ensure that will be the case.  In addition, McCain’s top advisor was paid over $30,000.00 per month for 5 years to lobby for deregulation of the mortgage industry (what does $2,000,000 buy these days?).  Then, when the markets collapse, he says that we need MORE regulation.  Mr. McCain, are you aware that your chief economic adviser actual wrote the bill to deregulate the mortgage industry and thus allow Wall Street to buy the risky mortgages and set up the collapse and taxpayer bailout of these companies?  Mr. McCain, are you aware that your chief economic advisor is a lobbyist for one of these Wall Street companies?  Mr. McCain, are you aware that the wife of your chief economic advisor was on the board at Enron while Mr. Gramm fought to deregulate the Energy trading industry allowing that company to collapse?

Mr. McCain, CNN says that you’re very taken with Sarah Palin’s husband and that despite his job as a snowmobile racer and his only having a high school deploma, that he may be a shadow governor due to the support he gives his wife.  Maybe he could be your next chief economic advisor!

CNN….next time a campaign feeds you a fluff story, would you mind trying to hide it a little better?  I actually got a little puke on my shirt after throwing up this bullshit you tried to feed me.  Next time, maybe you could just give me a list of the lies this McCain admin is already spewing and then try to sell their story:

Lie	Truth
Sarah Palin said “thanks but no thanks” for the bridge to nowhere	Said please give me money for the bridge so that oil companies can come drill on federally protected lands because she doesn’t believe in global warming, protecting endangered species, but does believe in hunting wolves from a helicopter.  As Chris Rock says, a black guy kills a dog (Mike Vick) and you go to jail.  White woman kills a wolf from a helicopter, and she’s a hero.  Additionally, Palin backs a new $600 million “Bridge to Nowhere” part II.
Has foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from her doorstep, and has energy policy knowledge.	Actually couldn’t name any of her own experience until John stepped in to tell her she knew about oil.  Palin says that we would be forced into a war with Russia if they attack an allie, so under a Palin administration we’re in World War III as of three months ago.
Welcomes an investigation into her firing of someone who wouldn’t fire her former brother-in-law.	Husband now refuses to testify, lawyers have blocked subpoenas.
Wants an open government.	Changed her work e-mail to a Yahoo account so that it wouldn’t be subject to subpoena’s.
Doesn’t believe in earmarks.	Requested $200 million in earmarks just this year.
Palin says she fired the governor’s chef to save money (what a reformer!)	Gave her a different title to do the same job for other Republicans.
Believes abtinence only sex ed does the job of sexual education.	Just had her fifth kid at age 44.  The child was born with Down Syndrome…an attribute 5-10 times more likely to babies born from older mothers (a fact I learned in non-abstinence only sex ed.)  Seventeen year old daughter didn’t learn from mom (or maybe did learn from mom), pregnant with first (debatable) child due to lack of birth control.

Financial Markets Tumble; McCain Adviser is to Blame

McCain has called his chief economic adviser (and UBS lobbyist) one of the smartest people he knows, but he also happens to be the guy who deregulated Wall Street to allow it to drive the market and buy up the risky mortgages that have ruined the economy.  He also deregulated the energy markets which benefitted Enron while his wife was on the board of directors there.  Phil Gramm’s advice to John McCain…continue to deregulate, and John has pushed this very idea.  However, on a day when the markets are tumbling, John, who’s more and more becoming the master of deception rather than the straight talk express, is slamming the regulators to be like Obama.  How convenient.

Three old guys who know how to do favors for friends, and wreck the economy (McCain, Gramm, Cheney).

John McCain’s Economic Adviser Sets John’s Policy and Lobbies for Banking Industry Simultaneously

The year was 2004, and I was working for a bank who’s mortgage company was originating 66% of it’s loans in California in areas where housing had skyrocketed to the point where the average home price was over 30 times the average income in some areas.  The normal ratio of home price to income for a home is usually between 2.5 to 3 times income.  In other words, If you make 100,000 in a year, then your home value should be in a 250,000 to 300,000 range.

Home values were skyrocketing in California and along the East coast due to investors’ greed, people trying to buy a home scared of being priced out if they waited, and/or the corporate market creating new products fueling the skyrocketing costs.  All of these factors fed on eachother creating a huge bubble in housing prices.  Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs), Interest Only ARMS, and ARMs that teased a rate so low that you risked have negative amortization on your home while the rate returned reality…became the norm.  Banks such as mine that originated these loans had done their full due diligence in most cases.  It was plain as day to anyone who could project rates out five years, that the payment shock (the amount the homeowners payment would increase due to the language in the note) would cripple the borrower by sometimes more than double their original home payment…three to five years down the line.

In my pointing out that borrowers wouldn’t be able to make their payments, executive management would say the customer would refinance.  However, as I rightly pointed out from the example above, there were areas, that were overvalued by almost 10 times (1000%) their actual value and that nobody would refinance a loan when the bubble busted and the home was worth half as much as what the original loan was for.  The conclusion was not to stop selling what the market was demanding, but to determine which were the riskiest of those loans to sell them at a premium to companies that didn’t care about doing the analysis as they were receiving bonuses for bringing on new loans, and/or were planning to sell off a portion of the loans we’d sold them, to Wall Street…and Wall Street would sell them to banks on a global level.  Everyone keeps making money off of a false market, and keeps getting huge bonuses for doing so.

The Bush administration loved it (and also loved the large contributions my fortune 500 company PAC and millionaire CEO and Board donated to him).  There was less than two percent of actual growth during this time, but since people had rising home prices, they were borrowing against equity in their home that never should have existed.  Result:  people spent money they didn’t really have, and the Bush Administration could claim higher growth, despite the “growth” just coming from consumers running up more debt.  Imagine that, the Bush Administration was lying, again.

‘How could this scheme continue to go unnoticed’ I thought (along with, do I really want to be working at this place…even though it was an industrywide problem)?  Well, the main reason it continued, is because of deregulation.  Regulators who were supposed to oversee the industry had been stripped of power and didn’t oversee the same types of banks.  A regulator for a possible originator Savings and Loan (Office of Thrift Supervision) wouldn’t be the same agency overseeing any other bank down the line.  Picture the CIA and FBI not talking to eachother despite knowing terrorists were getting flight training in Florida before 9/11.

Additionally and more importantly, the regulations (Glass-Stegall Act) that were put in place after the Great Depression to prevent commercial banks and investment banks from having an affiliation with one another was repealed in 1999 and replaced by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.  This act deregulated the banking industry and in essence allowed Investment Banks to get into the mortgage loan industry.  Packaging, or securitizing, large groups of loans and selling them to Wall Wtreet became the key to making large amounts of money.  Partly because of the Gramm Act, the economy is imploding, and people have lost their life savings due to predatory lending practices fueled by the greed of everyone from Realtors, to commercial bankers, appraisers, investment bankers, regulators, and the President.

The question is, what is the solution to this mess?  The answer, as John McCain sees it, is to follow down the path of what got us here.  John would like to DEREGULATE the industry further!  Yes, less oversight is needed according to McCain, but as he says, he doesn’t understand the economy that well.  He’s obviously losing his memory too, since deregulation is what got him in so much hot water in the 80’s as part of the Keating Five.  So, who is advising him on his economic positions since he doesn’t have the capacity to think through the issues himself?  Well, none other than former senator Phil Gramm of Gramm-Leach-Bliley.  As we all know, John has a new policy of firing any of his 60, or 59, or…okay we’re down to 54 lobbyists who are working for his campaign actually lobby for a corporation and advise him at the same time creating a conflict of interest for the American people.  So, who was Phil Graham lobbying AND working for while advising John on what policy position to take on the mortgage crisis?  The huge Swiss bank of UBS.

The obvious question is, what does it matter if you fire your lobbyists (Gramm still advises McCain), if they’ve already convinced you to set your policy position that benefits their employer?