Barack Obama is a liar of biblical proportions. That’s not new, but every now and then he spouts something that makes you want to scream “Are you effing kidding me?” And he’s done it again.
His Weekly Address yesterday was a beauty. He starts by patting himself on the back as usual:
Hi, everybody. It’s been seven years since the worst financial crisis in generations spread from Wall Street to Main Street – a crisis that cost millions of Americans their jobs, their homes, their life savings. It was a crisis that cost all of us. It was a reminder that we’re in this together – all of us.
We’re in this together- to a point. Ready? Here it comes:
Wall Street Reform turned the page on the era of ‘too big to fail.’ Now, in America, we welcome the pursuit of profit. But if your business fails, we shouldn’t have to bail you out. And under the new rules, we won’t – the days of taxpayer-funded bailouts are over.
This is not simply a lie. It’s a galactic lie.
Firstly, too big to fail is far from over. Fannie and Freddie still are too big to fail.
It’s been three years since the financial crisis, which spurred the great recession. In that time little has been done to fix the ‘too big to fail’ banks or the government sponsored agencies — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — responsible for the global economic meltdown.
Today U.S. banks are bigger than ever. The top four banks in the United States — J.P Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup — control 62% of total commercial assets in this country, up 8% from five years ago, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The Dodd-Frank bill was supposed to rein in the banks, but clearly has failed to do much to date, in part because the banks and many Republicans have been fighting to repeal the legislation. A big point of contention in the bill is the so-called Volcker rule, which would prevent firms from using customer deposits for trades made for the bank’s own accounts. The banks have also been pushing back against calls to revamp debit card rules, as well as the outright breakup of the institutions.
That’s not all. Some of the “too big to fail” banks are even bigger. Small banks are getting killed, which will lead to bigger banks via consolidation. Consumers have been clobbered as well. 75% of banks used to offer free checking and that’s fallen to 39%.
Obama’s Wall St. donors continue to see their profits go through the roof thanks to Dodd Frank. Small banks are paying for the sins of the large banks.
But let’s return to Obama’s central theme:
But if your business fails, we shouldn’t have to bail you out.
Unless you’re GM. Or Chrysler. Or Goldman Sachs. Or AIG. Or any of the 951 entities Obama bailed out. Or the insurance companies which support Obamacare. Obama is now bailing out and will continue to bail out insurance companies:
The bailouts are at the heart of this web of deceit. Pre-Obamacare, insurers had to price their policies mainly by reference to market forces (albeit in an already heavily-regulated market): charge enough to cover the actuarial cost expected for each enrollee, but not too much to lose business. Guess wrong and you lost money. But under Obamacare, consumers no longer have the choice whether or not to buy policies, and insurance companies no longer face any risk of losing money, because they’ve been promised a bailout. Money will still be lost, but it will be taxpayer money, and you never run out of that, do you?
The bailout was sweetened for 2015.
None of what he says is true. Obama is again a grand liar, but it is his good fortune to have impossibly stupid supporters who are not able to summon the least bit of intellectual curiosity and question what he says. Instead, all they will hear is this:
In America, we should reward drive, innovation, and fair play. That’s what Wall Street reform does. It makes sure everybody plays by the same set of rules. And if we keep moving forward, not backward – if we keep building an economy that rewards responsibility instead of recklessness, then we won’t just keep coming back – we’ll come back stronger than ever.
Thanks, and have a great weekend.”
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.