Robert Reich | The Remarkable Political Stupidity of Wall Street in Filing a Lawsuit against Commodities Futures Trading Commission in order to overturn CFTC's new rule limiting speculative trading | Truthout

The ongoing obstruction of the CFTC is perhaps the best example of unbridled capitalism rendering useless the instruments needed to keep it from getting out of control. The Wall street lobby has been handing the CFTC it's ass since the late '90s when Greenspan, Geithner and Summers teamed up to destroy Brooksley Born's attempts at derivatives regulation (and her career as well).

Not to worry. Although the derivatives market--estimated at $500-$600 trillion--continues to be almost entirely unregulated, I'm sure that Wall street is looking after our best interests...

Of course they will sue, something is impeding the unbridled run to extract profits from the American people through food and fuel.

The greedbeast is never satisfied.

To be precise, the Commodities and Futures Trade Commission has a law on the books for years that clearly states that anything that is beyond the natural forces of market supply and demand is illegal. For example, speculator number one buys oil, trades oil at a profit to speculator number two, who trades oil at a profit to speculator number three, etc... By the time oil reaches the pump as gas, it has been traded back and for two or three dozen times with all speculators making a profit. That roughly DOUBLES the price of gas at the pump for average American consumers. That speculation frenzy starts before the tanker leaves port in the Mideast and ultimately ends up with the speculators making more money off of that oil than the people that produced it.

What's seriously wrong with that picture? It causes nation wide inflation as we all depend on gasoline. And it doesn't stop there. The same greedy speculators do the same thing with wheat, rice, corn, sugar, etc... This substantially increases food prices at the grocery store while making famine relief world wide much more expensive and difficult.

Can someone please tell me why we need to grossly overindulge a bankster gang creating nation wide inflation for the sake of their insatiable GREED? That's not the natural market forces of supply and demand, that's GREED at everyone else's expense.

Why is Wall Street still basically headed in the same sociopath direction? No one has been held fully accountable for their white collar crimes. Because there are fewer Wall Street giants now, this group MONOPOLY is more powerful than ever and the country is more vulnerable than ever.

Too Big To Fail? 10 Banks Own 77 Percent Of All US Banking Assets

http://wallstreetsectorselector.com/2011/07/too-big-to-fail-10-banks-own-77-percent-of-all-u-s-banking-assets/

Back during the financial crisis of 2008, the American people were told that the largest banks in the United States were “too big to fail” and that was why it was necessary for the federal government to step in and bail them out. The idea was that if several of our biggest banks collapsed at the same time the financial system would not be strong enough to keep things going and economic activity all across America would simply come to a standstill. Congress was told that if the “too big to fail” banks did not receive bailouts that there would be chaos in the streets and this country would plunge into another Great Depression. Since that time, however, essentially no efforts have been made to decentralize the U.S. banking system. Instead, the “too big to fail” banks just keep getting larger and larger and larger. Back in 2002, the top 10 banks controlled 55 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Today, the top 10 banks control 77 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Unfortunately, these giant banks are also colossal mountains of risk, debt and leverage. They are incredibly unstable and they could start coming apart again at any time. None of the major problems that caused the crash of 2008 have been fixed. In fact, the U.S. banking system is more centralized and more vulnerable today than it ever has been before.

My point being that if we want to be truly safe from Wall Street white collar crime, this lawsuit needs to be publicly deconstructed and blamed on the white collar criminals behind it. I can't say that I trust judges at this point after corporate personhood got established. Judges acting on behalf of Wall Street need to be impeached out of office.

Beyond all else, we need to re establish the Glass-Steagall Act which divided up Wall Street giants and established regulations against them forming again. Investment corporations should be kept completely separate from savings banks. Then the investment corporations will not be "too big to let fail." They could be given a mandate to not be involved in white collar crime or get forced into bankruptcy with executive assets seized to pay off debts.

My father and brother have a small farm and could never set the price of their grain, it was the commodities market that told them what the price was regardless of their input costs . You tell me what business would put up with that? All the hedging and speculation in the agricultural industry is pathetic and this is not a true market and this has been happening for over 40 years. All the small farmers have been driven out over those years for huge factory farms that pour pesticides into their land and produce a far inferior product. My family farm didnt make a dime when they traded on the commodities market. They flushed their land for seven years from pesticides and went organic. They finally turned a profit by NOT having their product in the commodities trade. There is a war going on in agriculture right now with the factory farmers along with Monsanto the pesticides company's against the organic farmers . We need to clean up the agricultural policies AND the commodities market OR support independent organic exchanges. There are pure organic food exchanges www.agriworld.com

Lets not forget that Obama is a big friend to wallstreet, dont you know open secrets said they gave him the most money.. what they are really scared of is republicans..

of course you have to ignore that open secrets these days is mostly useless due to citizens united, allowing companies to spend an unlimited amount of money and keep the donors anonymous. it can even be foreign governments, but we cant tell. Or course the right dont give a @!$%# and think anonymous is good.(this after freaking out that the law says obama didnt have to keep track of everyone who gave him less than 250)

You have to ignore the leaked memo from the banks attacking OWS and going after Obama and dems in districts that dont like obama.

You have to ignore that obama gave us dodd/frank, that he is pushing for more regulations, that he gave us the consumer financial protection agency, something teh right fought and are still fighting despite it legally passed. He tried to give us eliz warren as head, someone the right and the banks really really hate and managed to prevent from becoming the head of the new CFPB.

Lets not forget that every right winger and ron paul want to remove the pitiful regulations we put in place to try to slow down the next time this happens

OBAMA HAS NOT BEEN A GOOD COP. People should have been charged. But mind you they gutted a lot of the laws that would have made what they did illegal, but still I will admit, Obama has been a sorry ass cop.

But for actual friends of wallstreet, you mainly have to look at the right wing.

Obama took student loan welfare away from the banks, so dont tell me he is in bed with them, because he would be a very sadistic lover.

If ever the United States of America was ripe for a third-party movement...and even a fourth-party movement...to replace the first party and the second party, the time is now. Starting with term limits, strong regulations on lobbying and the forbidding of ex-officeholders to be lobbyists EVER, and a few other necessary constitutional tweaks and mods, we might be on the road to saving what is left of this country. Might be.

First, let's make it clear that the commodity markets are not the stock market. But both have this in common. They have gone from instruments of economic activity to nothing less than an "economic cassino". Commodities markets were supposed to be a way to set prices based on supply and demand. This would be based on predicted agricultural or other natural resource production matched to predicted demand to set a price at the wholesale level. The prices given farmers or other producers and the retail rpice would be set from this "free market" determination. The stock market was originally nothing more than a means to raise capital for new ventures or expanding the production base in response to demand. But theory ignores the impact of human character. Money could be made be facilitating the markets, then by manipulating them and then by controling them. And the concept of the market could be expanded. Now investment firms sell investment products where the buyer actual bets that the value of stcok will GO DOWN. Capitalism becomes a vehicle for greed and gain by those without morals. Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives understood this. FDR and his economists understood this. The Federal government is the only institution with the power and reach to regulate the markets and protect not only the players from themselves (CDOs, anyone?) but the national economy and the consumers from the players. Unfortunately, "conservatives" and "libertarians" are so focused on the priviledges of citizenship and liberty and not the responsibilities and the wonder of unfettered capitalism that they can't see how their love of the "free market" (something that has never existed in the history of economics) injurs and damages this nation and its people.

My suggestion is to let the "Job creators" not create like they don't do now anyway and let the market, banks, and every other gambling Casino go out of business. The only way to stick it to these losers is to hit them where it hurts. Money and greed. Merry freakin' Xmas. Bah Humbug.

It's not that Wall Street is politically stupid. The problem is that they are so arrogant and greedy, and they think that they are so powerful that they literally don't care what the rest of the country thinks of them.

Speculative trading is essential to the commodities market and is not an evil in itself. But the notion that no regulations should be put on it to limit excess speculation is nothing more than the effort of the greed heads to have their way completely and without any limits.

Reasonable regulation is not only necessary to keep them from abusing the market, but to save them from their own blind greed.

The assets of the four biggest – J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo – now equal 62 percent of total commercial bank assets. That’s up from 54 percent five years ago.

First order of business in the 2013 Congress: Now financial institution can assets in excess of 5% of total commercial bank assets. Leverage is limited to 10 to 1. All speculation must be transparent. Derivatives must be transparent. Rating agencies are paid from a pool account paid into by those rated and those using the ratings. Not by either entity alone or even the specific entities involved directly. Anything less is a conflict of interest.