Don't allow them to be afraid of elections by dancing away from the President, FORCE them with our VOTES to MAKE THE CHANGES WE WANT. Freewheeling corporations since the 50's should never have happened. Most of the de-regulation in the last 30 years should never have happened. We are loosing our middle class and our society is shifting to reflect feudalism... the masses working to support the super rich. DON'T ALLOW the Congress to not support the President and the changes WE WANT. MAKE THEM stay committed by supporting the DEMOCRATS WHO WILL!!! The President can't achieve his goals, our goals, if his own Congress won't support him. And members of Congress seem more worried about our votes and reactions to the soundbites of the day, then actually supporting change. Don't let this be OUR legacy.

http://davies.lohudblogs.com/

“The Financial Services Agreement part of the WTO obligates the US to provide market access to foreign financial service firms without limits on how they are structured.” The removal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banking from investment banking and which prevented a problem in one financial sector from infecting the entire system, allowed the meltdown of the whole global economy as the shield between the different types of banking and financial institutions was gone.

The WTO agreement “means that US taxpayers may have to bail out foreign banks, too.” Our obligation under the WTO ensure that funds from the TARP must be made available for foreign banks operating in the US. This is why some of the taxpayer funds given to the bail-out of AIG were immediately sent offshore to entities such as France’s Societe Generale, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, Switzerland’s UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The WTO “obligates the US to a ’standstill provision’ which prevents us from undoing many of our crazy deregulation policies with respect to the…financial services we submitted to WTO jurisdiction.” This means, in a nutshell, that while Congress is talking about re-regulation, the WTO rules we agreed to say we cannot create new regulations. Surely, Congress is aware of this. The Congressional lip-service must be to placate the public, which seems aware that without re-regulation the economy will not ever recover, but will go through endlessly repeated cycles of bust and bailout. And certainly Tim Geithner knows about our WTO strictures; he led the effort to use the WTO to impose the deregulated, Glass-Steagall Act-free model on the world during the Clinton administration. For him to talk about re-regulation is the height of irony and sham.

[Note: anything in quotation marks is from Public Citizen, the rest is just me.]

Dr. Reich, I have (obviously) made the assumption that the Public Citizen group is correct in its presentation of the WTO agreements. Are they? If so, there is not much the US can actually do, legally, regarding reformation of regulations, with the caveat that we do tend to ignore international agreements with impunity lately. Also, I seriously question the wisdom of granting new regulatory powers to the Fed; after all, they are not required to report to Congress on their activities. Unless that magically changes, we would be giving new authority to an entity that needn't tell the public what they are doing with that authority. (I.e., who will guard the guards?)

Whether it be gay rights, healthcare, oversight of the financial system, torture issues, SCOTUS or more, Obama seems to be the master of the half-measure.

He's really moving the yardstick in the right (i.e. left) direction, and he is a solid president so far.

Yet, he's continuing the Bush Clinton Bush pattern of strides to the right followed by mincing baby steps left. Whosoever follows Obama will swing us solidly rightwards. There isn't enough room to the right of where we are now on the spectrum, folks.

The US is going to be in a world of hurt sometime in 2017.

If anyone out there knows the truth, it Robert Reich.

If the witness protection program really worked & Robert Reich thought he could actually make a difference & save AMERICA, he would pull out all the stops & tell it like it is.

Unfortunately, he is like Bill Moyers who worked for one of the most corrupt politicians ever & always has interesting guests but never quite comes out & tells the truth, the entire truth, because he enjoys life & his family.

Besides secrecy, FASCISM uses assassination as a policy tool.

In a nutshell, Obama is WALL STREET & he's giving the FED absolute control & the so-called plan to protect citizens financial dealings does exactly the opposite.

Obama strikes me as a people pleaser. He's always working to make sure he doesn't alienate anyone which ends up leaving him toothless in his ability to make real change. If you really want to make a difference you can't be afraid to make a few enemies. Teddy Roosevelt being a primary example, when he busted the trusts. When change happens there are winners and losers, the way things have been working for a long time now is that it is always the public that winds up the losers, that hasn't changed.

before he was elected, because he's a politician. the only change he really wanted was to replace dubya in the oval office. it's not hard to know he woudn't do any good: he couldn't do any good. the system forbids it.

if you are going to continue to working with people, and you don't like the results, you have to change the system.

americans must get citizen initiative first, and use that fundamental tool to shape a democracy run by the people, for the people. there is no other way.

it's not impossible. you can do it. just get off your knees and stop voting for politicians who refuse to institute citizen initiative.

I like it.

Now that's change we can all believe in...

Bankers and finaciers have been running the US government ever since the Revolution. So it doesn't surprise me that real changes will probably never take place.

It might just be the nature of the beast that we have to go through these economic upheavals every 20-30 years, followed by a few tense years while the rich cover their losses with other peoples' money, then it starts all over again.