Reform Kabuki, Act II: Finance

Don't be fooled again, please. Hopeful Obamanauts and loyal Dims are all atwitter on the blogs and FB today with tales of the kick-ass that Chris Dodd is said to have administered to Miss Chinless, 1960, Mitch McConnell.

Democrats Batter Mitch McConnell For Standing With Wall Street

proclaims a strident hed on Huffpost.

But of course, it's all political kabuki. Dodd's bill is crap, and is mostly a giveaway to the banksters. But if it looks like the Pukes oppose it, that gives Dodd--and the banksters-- some cover. And with this tri9ck, they're pulling the exact same scam as they did last year with so-called "health care reform" issue.

I LOVES me some Nomi Prins, and I figgers if you liked health care reform performance, you're gonna go apeshit bananas for financial regulation reform:

" Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd's financial "reform" proposal (Barney Frank's wasn't much better) won't change the nature of anything Wall Street does. Dodd's needless watering down of a proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency has been well-documented, so here is a list of 10 other problems Dodd's bill will not fix:"

It's a pretty extensive list, and should provide a decent check-list if an observer were to chart the unfolding of the thing. The list starts on p.2 of the piece, and includes:

1) It won't make the biggest most "systemically important" banks (read: systemically destructive) any smaller...
2) It won't reduce the economic danger from rampant, overleveraged trading activities...
3) It won't change the nature, transparency, size, complexity or usage of the most heinous derivatives...
4) It won't prevent the creation of new toxic assets...
5) It won't contain the risk to the shadow banking system from hedge funds...
6) It won't remove the conflicts of interest between banks that issue securities and rating agencies that rate them, and get paid a fee for doing so...
7) It won't contain systemic risk...
8) It won't wrest control of our economic future from the banks the Fed couldn't regulate over the past decade...
9) It won't constrain the Fed's future bailout operations...(and)
10) It won't prevent bank failures by separating speculative banking from deposit-insured commercial banking a la Glass Steagall, but instead contains plans for resolving them, after the fact.

Now don't say we didn't warn you!