Bankers, still Beltway royalty
From the Huffington Post:
"Just this week, the bankers and their lobbyists -- who you might have reasonably thought would be the political equivalent of lepers in the halls of power these days -- have kneecapped substantive bankruptcy reform in the Senate, helped pull the plug on a government-brokered deal with Chrysler, and tried feverishly to throw up a roadblock in the way of credit card reform in the House. You heard me right. America's bankers -- those wonderful folks who brought us the economic meltdown -- are still being treated as Beltway royalty by those in Congress."
US Senator Dick Durbin seems to agree:
"The banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
Though we don't know the intestinal back-stabbing politics of it yet, this may be why there seems to be some weakening of commitment to the thoroughly excellent Obama-Levin-Coleman Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act which has not yet passed into law. Senator Max Baucus now looks as if he is going to get a much weaker tax haven initiative through. As Reuters reports:
"The draft bill, sponsored by Democratic Senator Max Baucus, seeks to deter offshore tax havens by increasing reporting requirements to the Internal Revenue Service for entities transferring funds offshore and puts more onus on tax preparers to root out wrongdoing. . . But the Baucus effort is narrower in scope and seen by some as more lenient than an earlier proposal introduced by Democrat Senator Carl Levin."
Levin's bill focuses more on penalties. For example, it seeks to amend current laws with a penalty of up to $1 million for any person who fails to disclose any offshore holding or transaction involving debt or equity. The Baucus bill aims to boost some penalties, but on a much smaller scale.
As a Washington-based TJN correspondent put it, this could potentially be positive if it gets something done, and chances of passing are, it seems, good. But, she added:
"It is also possibly bad because the Baucus bill is so weak that it basically give the illusion of action while not actually engendering much action."
The latter seems to be a very real, and very dangerous, possibility. Could the bankers' lobbyists have had a hand here?
"Just this week, the bankers and their lobbyists -- who you might have reasonably thought would be the political equivalent of lepers in the halls of power these days -- have kneecapped substantive bankruptcy reform in the Senate, helped pull the plug on a government-brokered deal with Chrysler, and tried feverishly to throw up a roadblock in the way of credit card reform in the House. You heard me right. America's bankers -- those wonderful folks who brought us the economic meltdown -- are still being treated as Beltway royalty by those in Congress."
US Senator Dick Durbin seems to agree:
"The banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
Though we don't know the intestinal back-stabbing politics of it yet, this may be why there seems to be some weakening of commitment to the thoroughly excellent Obama-Levin-Coleman Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act which has not yet passed into law. Senator Max Baucus now looks as if he is going to get a much weaker tax haven initiative through. As Reuters reports:
"The draft bill, sponsored by Democratic Senator Max Baucus, seeks to deter offshore tax havens by increasing reporting requirements to the Internal Revenue Service for entities transferring funds offshore and puts more onus on tax preparers to root out wrongdoing. . . But the Baucus effort is narrower in scope and seen by some as more lenient than an earlier proposal introduced by Democrat Senator Carl Levin."
Levin's bill focuses more on penalties. For example, it seeks to amend current laws with a penalty of up to $1 million for any person who fails to disclose any offshore holding or transaction involving debt or equity. The Baucus bill aims to boost some penalties, but on a much smaller scale.
As a Washington-based TJN correspondent put it, this could potentially be positive if it gets something done, and chances of passing are, it seems, good. But, she added:
"It is also possibly bad because the Baucus bill is so weak that it basically give the illusion of action while not actually engendering much action."
The latter seems to be a very real, and very dangerous, possibility. Could the bankers' lobbyists have had a hand here?
posted by TJN at 12:15 am
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