Bill Moyers and Simon Johnson Discuss Obama Strategy/Dodd Frank Dismantling and Elizabeth Warren
Last edited Tue Jan 20, 2015, 08:00 PM - Edit history (1)
The first part of the article is well worth the read. The first part of the article is well worth the read. This is a snip from the bottom mentioning Warren and where we go forward but the beginning of article goes into detail about why Dodd-Frank will be gutted going forward.
Who Is Simon Johnson:
Simon H. Johnson (born January 16, 1963)[1] is a British American economist. He is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management[2] and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.[3] He has held a wide variety of academic and policy-related positions, including Professor of Economics at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.[4] From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, he was Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund.[5]
He is author, with James Kwak, of the 2010 book 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (ISBN 978-0307379054), with whom he has also co-founded and regularly contributes to the economics blog The Baseline Scenario.[6]
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Republicans and Wall Street Say to Hell With Protecting the Public!
Moyers' interview with MIT Economist Simon Johnson (1/20/15)
by
Bill Moyers
Moyers: I've read that depositors and taxpayers could be liable for trillions of dollars in oil derivative losses as a result of falling oil prices and the repeal of 716 of the Dodd-Frank provision that passed in December. Could we be liable?
Johnson: I don’t want to sound like a doom-monger, but I think the basic answer is we have no clue. These very large banks -- they’re big trading houses really, taking speculative positions on a daily and hourly basis and betting the whole shop sometimes -- we don’t know what their exposure is to movements in oil prices. They’re very opaque; they do not have good disclosure. I think even the regulators don’t fully understand the exposure of these banks to complex derivatives. That’s something we saw with what happened with housing prices and the derivatives based on that in 2008. I suspect something like that could happen with oil and with other commodity prices. There is a big exposure and any financial disaster can have a massive effect on the real economy. That’s where you get the trillion-dollar losses in GDP and incomes and millions of jobs lost. I’m worried about that. I’m worried about lots of things around finance...
Moyers: What else worries you?
Johnson: Europe. I don’t think it’s good to sound panic-stricken at every turn of events, but we have not done a good job of insulating ourselves from the risks that are going to be generated by the European banking system as we move forward, and we have to see the world much more in those defensive terms than we did in previous decades.
Moyers: Who’s standing up for the public?
Johnson: A few people and I think they're the heroes. Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, is the most prominent, but there's also Sharrod Brown from Ohio, Jeff Merkley from Oregon and David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana. The Independent Community Bankers of America, they deserve a lot more by way of kudos from the public. Perhaps they’re not as high-profile as some lobby groups but they’re absolutely speaking truth to authority on these issues. There’s a list and it’s a list of sensible people. It’s a longer list than it was in the 1990s when very few people stood against the consensus for deregulation. But it’s a group that’s not yet powerful enough and we’ll see -- I think the big issue, really, is the presidential election -- which way do the Democrats decide to go on this issue and which way do the Republicans go, although I think that’s a bit more predictable. And then who wins in the big competition for narratives and ideas in 2016.
Moyers: But if that’s the case, it leaves the public vulnerable because Bill Clinton was president in the 1990s when Glass-Steagall was repealed and George W. Bush was president in aughts of this century when the economy collapsed. Democrats passed Dodd-Frank, but it’s now being weakened. The election doesn’t seem to decide how Wall Street is treated in Washington. Wall Street always seems to have the upper hand.
Johnson: That is true and has been true in the past. President Obama campaigned on the promise of changing things and not so much has changed on this dimension. I think though that it depends on who’s running, what that person believes and what they are really going to do when they get in. So whether Elizabeth Warren runs is one question. If Hillary Clinton is the lead candidate and wins the nomination, who are her advisers? Who does she listen to? Does she go back with Robert Rubin, who was treasury secretary in the 1990s, who is still, as far as we know, largely persuaded that big is beautiful in finance? Or does she go with some different advisers and perhaps a perspective that’s closer to that of Elizabeth Warren? I think the Democratic primary is right now, the real primary.
Moyers: How so?
Johnson: I think this is when the battle for ideas is being fought. I think the arguments about the substance on the Democratic side are absolutely now and by the time you reach the formal nominating process, it’s going to be a bit late. So ask me again in three months or in six months and I think we’ll have a clearer answer for whether 2016 could be decisive or whether it will be, as you just suggested, potentially business as usual irrespective of who wins.
Moyers: Does Elizabeth Warren have an obligation to run in order to get her argument into the warp and woof of the Democratic race, just as the tea party folks ran and got their arguments embraced by the Republican Party? Doesn’t she have an obligation to get into the debate, into the campaign and try to champion, give people an option to the establishment candidates?
Johnson: I think she is in that conversation, she does have an ability to mobilize people and an ability to bring pressure and I think -- although it’s not for me to say whether or not she has an obligation -- but I think she believes and is passionate about wanting to really move the needle and change the world on these important dimensions. It’s up to her to decide how best to do that and I for one am not going to second guess her on that. I’m going to be supportive every inch of the way, because honestly, we have nobody else. We have a few other people who are great, but Elizabeth Warren is by far our best hope for meaningful change on any of these dimensions.
Moyers: In the meantime, what can people who are concerned -- Main Street people, people who do see what you see, what we see -- what can people do to be more effective against the big bankers who are controlling our Congress today?
Johnson: Express your views. Write your congressman, email them and make phone calls. There’s a Progressive Change Coalition project called The Big Ideas Project. You can find ways through that organization to tell them and others what your views are in terms of the priorities for the country. You’ve got to speak out and you’ve got to find ways to be polite, be articulate, be forceful and be persuasive.
More of the Interview at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/20/republicans-and-wall-street-say-hell-protecting-public
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks for posting KoKo. 
