Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

Dodd-Frank is the Obama presidency

The Dodd-Frank financial reforms are a year old and very little has changed in the banking system. As Matt Stoller points out, the bill was more about creating the illusion of a solution to the financial crisis than imposing the kind of financial restructuring needed to prevent future problems and begin a real stabilization of the economy.

After the immediate crisis was contained, losses were socialized, and profits returned to financial executives, Congress had to put together a “solution”. It would have a giant bite at the apple in restructuring our regulatory apparatus. But in order to perpetrate the oligarchic banking structure, it would be important that no structural changes to the industry be implemented. Not one regulator was fired for his or her part in the crisis. The Justice Department adopted a posture of legalizing financial control fraud by refusing to prosecute anyone involved in the meltdown, and continues to allow millions of cases of foreclosure fraud to continue. Ben Bernanke was renominated, and the administration fought a bitter below-the-radar battle to secure his confirmation. With a few modest exceptions, the risk-taking and leverage in our financial markets continues apace, and the deregulatory neoliberal mindset is still dominant. The Federal Reserve has been audited, but the system is now accountability-free for high level operatives in finance and politics. And now that Elizabeth Warren has been thrown overboard by the administration, the lockdown of the financial system is nearly complete.

And mostly, that’s what Dodd-Frank accomplished. It rearranged regulatory offices and delivered a new set of mandates, but effected no structural changes to our banking system. Congress never asked what happened, or why, or even, what kind of banking system do we want? And that’s because Obama’s Treasury Secretary already had the answers to these questions.

So, unemployment hovers at between 9 and 10 percent, the housing market remains in the dumper and consumer confidence remains low. The euphoria that followed the election of a Democrat who professed to be a reformer has abated once it was clear that he is nothing more than a brand (in Chris Hedges’ words) who talks a good game and shills for the establishment. So now, rather than the dawning of a promised progressive era, the November 2010 election brought us a Congress controlled by kooks and cranks who are more than willing to send the nation to financial default.

But the president and his supporters continue to praise his efforts, which they say prevented a full collapse. That may have been enough in the early part of 2009, but two years on, we have a right to expect more from him and from the Republicans who now control the House of Representatives.
The sad fact, as Dodd-Frank hits its first birthday, is that it is a perfect representation of the Obama presidency.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Journalists behaving badly, British division: Rupert punts before Parliament

http://abcnews.go.com/assets/player/walt2.6/flash/SFP_Walt_2_69.swf
I’ve avoided weighing in on the phone-hacking scandal surrounding the media empire of Rupert Murdoch — mostly because I have little to add. (Disclosure: My wife works in the corporate offices of Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, which was bought by Murdoch nearly four years ago.)

But watching the highlights of Murdoch’s act before Parliament yesterday — and I can only assume it was an act because of his reputation as an engaged and ruthless businessman — made me mourn for what is left of the newspaper business.

Let’s get this out of the way, first: Paying cops for stories and phone hacking — whether done to innocent victims of crimes of hypocritical politicians — is unethical even, in those rare cases, when it is not illegal. It casts all journalists in a bad light and should not be tolerated.

What is troubling about the allegations here is that a) Murdoch has taken no personal responsibility for what happened under his command and b) it appears that the scandals tentacles reach well beyond the New of the World into other areas of the Murdoch empire.

Murdoch has promised to fix this, but given that News Corp. has always played by its own rules and has used language to mask its true agenda (fair and balanced, anyone?), I am dubious that much will change going forward.

Of greater concern, of course, is his unwillingness to take personal responsibility for the failures of company with which, by all accounts, he is engaged with on a micro level. He may have been humbled by his appearance before Parliament, but he also remains defiant — leaving me to wonder exactly what he means when he says he’ll clean this up.

Expect a public-relations effort that, in the end, will attempt to paint a friendlier face on Darth Vader, while leaving the news divisions to play their dirty games.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

ESPN says Reyes to stay in New York I say, great news

Jose Reyes,
ESPN photo

The Mets apparently are going to make a run at keeping Jose Reyes. While there is no guarantee that they can sign him at the end of the season, they have to make the effort. He is the face of the franchise and the perfect fit for Citi Field.

The problem is money. The Wilpons’ financial woes are well known, but the return they would get for him at this point is not worth not taking a run at signing him, as the Beltran market indicates. The trade market more generally might be depressed this year. Consider what Buster Olney has to say:

So keep him and make him the cornerstone of a new era.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Let’s talk about jobs

Ben Bernanke demonstrated a political split personality this week, first saying job-growth is the issue and stimulus is probably necessary and then following with a “maybe, not now, later, soon.”

Washington is stuck on the debt ceiling debate and the dangerous push to slash and burn the federal payroll, which will mean lost federal jobs and more state jobs flushed down the toilet. In South Brunswick. There were more than a hundred school jobs cut. Other districts did the same, as did municipal governments without anyone talking about the reality that public jobs are still jobs and that cutting these jobs does nothing to improve our debt situation (fewer workers means fewer taxpayers) or the economy (fewer workers means less money around to spend on consumer goods or housing or w en necessities).

This approach is not goin to u us to fiscal or economic health, but continue the downward spiral.

I say this all the time, but it bears repeating hers: end our multiple wars now, bring the troops home and slash the military budget. Use some ofthemmoney to pay down the debt and the rest for infrastructure and aid to states and towns. That will create jobs and create lasting improvements on which our future e onomic health can be built.

The debt debate should be a war debate

Has the president finally gotten a spine? According to Sam Stein at The Huffington Post, President Barack Obama told House Majority Leader Eric Cantor not to call his bluff, promising to go to the American people to get something done on the debate over the debt ceiling.

And yet, why don’t I feel like the president has the back of the American people. Maybe it is the second part of his threat that has me worried:

“Eric, don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people on this,” the president said, according to both Cantor and another attendee. “This process is confirming what the American people think is the worst about Washington: that everyone is more interested in posturing, political positioning, and protecting their base, than in resolving real problems.”

Translation: Both sides are wrong, Washington is the problem and principle is not all that important.

Stein reports that the two sides were arguing over just how much to cut from federal spending, though he does not say what programs might be on the table.

According to several attendees, negotiations stalled from the onset over the same issues that have proved irresolvable. Working off of talks that had been spearheaded by Vice President Joseph Biden, the president said he would be comfortable signing off on northward of $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending and mandatory spending cuts. With additional negotiations, he added, he could move that figure up to $1.7 trillion, and with a willingness to consider revenue increases and tax loophole closures, lawmakers could get to over $2 trillion. His preference, he said, was to continue to push for the biggest package possible, so long as it was balanced.

What is missing from this debate is that the cost of two (some, myself included, would say three-plus) wars and a bloated military budget — along with the recession — has driven the debt up dramatically. End the wars, create jobs and let the Bush tax cuts expire and we have a good start toward righting our fiscal ship.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.