Clinton and the Great Recession

 IN AN INTERVIEW AIRED YESTERDAY ON CBS BY KATIE COURIC, PRESIDENT CLINTON BLAMED THE RECESSION ON BUSH AND THE REPUBLICANS;

WHY DID COURIC LET HIM GET AWAY WITH THAT????

The seeds of the Great Recession were planted by the Clinton Administration with bi-partisian support from the Congress

1. On November 12, 1999, President Clinton signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act  [the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act] permitting commercial banks to merge with investment banks and therefore to issue securities such as collateralized debt obligations. The Republicans were in control of the House and Senate but the Repeal passed with    

most members of both parties voting for it [Citigroup was the lead bank in lobbying for this legislation because it had just merged with an investment bank and an insurance company.]

Days after the Clinton Administration stated that they would support the repeal of Glass-Steagall, Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, announced he was leaving to take a top position at Citigroup as the second in command. ....was there a quid-pro-quo for making this deal?....we don’t know.

2. On December 21, 2000, President Clinton signed into law the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which made issuing over-the-counter derivatives legal without any accompanying regulations, not even the requirement to report derivatives that were sold.

He signed this law despite the fact that the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born, had warned that some day these instruments would bring down the banks and it would cost the American taxpayers a huge amount of money; famously, a hedge fund named Long-Term Capital Management already had nearly brought down the financial industry by betting on derivatives.

This was a bi-partisian bill, agreed to by Democrats as well as Republicans

3. Despite promising in his campaign for President not to enter into NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement], President Clinton signed  NAFTA in 1994 after adding some labor and environment provisions that unfortunately had no strong provisions for enforcement.

During Clinton’s term in office, he entered into ~300 trade agreements [according to Wikipedia] which some claim were so one-sided in favor of the other country that more than 2 million jobs left the U.S. (an average of 45 thousand jobs a month from 1997 to 2001) during Clinton’s second term in office [see The Economist, The Clinton Shuffle: Free Trade; U.S. Jobs Shipped Abroad:  A New Measure by Erica L. Groshen, Bart Hobijn and Margaret M. McConnell]

SIGN OUR PETITION TO SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY

TAKE A STEP TOWARD SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY 

PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION

(Click the link "A Petition to Save Social Security" under Find Us On Facebook)

IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR THE U.S. TO START PAYING DOWN ITS HUGE DEBT, BUT FOR THE MOST PART, SOCIAL SECURITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TAKING MONEY FROM THE GENERAL TREASURY  

As we explained in a previous blog [July 28], Social Security’s revenue comes from a separate payroll tax.  What does impact our deficit is the money that the Federal Government “borrowed” from Social Security in order to fund earmarks and other wasteful government spending.  The current debt owed to Social Security is ~$2.5 Trillion.  

Our petition says the following:


1)  The $2.5 T debt does not have to be repaid  [so the deficit would be immediately decreased by that amount]


2)  The “cap” [as explained in our Blog] would be lifted so that high earners would be paying a bit more in payroll taxes


3)  The Federal Government would promise [by passing a law] that no money would be borrowed from Social Security in the future [Al Gore’s idea of locking up the funds]

This would eliminate the need to push back the retirement age past 67 which is already too late.

We have only 24 signatures, so we need YOU to step up to sign the petition and to circulate this message to your friends and family to ask for their signatures as well.  

 DON’T ACCEPT WHAT SOME POLITICIANS WANT YOU TO BELIEVE, THAT SOCIAL SECURITY WILL NOT BE THERE FOR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN....ACT NOW TO PRESERVE THIS ESSENTIAL PROGRAM 

MEDICARE FRAUD: AT LEAST $60 BILLION ANNUALLY

The U.S. Justice Department stated that Medicare pays out $60 Billion in fraudulent charges each year.  (This is approximately 14% of Medicare’s annual claims).  

Some experts think the number is twice that amount, according to Cynthia McFadden and Almin Karamehmedovic who reported on a four month Nightline investigation into Medicare scams [March 17, 2010 on ABC News).  A similar investigation was conducted and reported on by 60 Minutes.

A Medicare fraud strike force was established in 2007, however, before an investigation even begins, the perpetrators usually have already collected Medicare’s payments and closed down their operations.

According to the 60 Minutes and Nightline reports, Medicare fraud has surpassed drug dealing because it is so easy, so lucrative and carries such little risk.  A criminal only needs a code book from Medicare showing the billing codes for services and products that Medicare will pay for, plus a list of “patients” showing their names, date of birth, Social Security number and address. They simply fill out their forms correctly and money from Medicare is wired directly into their bank accounts within 30 days.  The ABC News reporters interviewed DHHS Secretary Sebelius’ staff who stated that Medicare has the power to stop payments if they suspect fraud.  But this is rarely done even when there is clear evidence of fraud.

Most troubling were interviews of Medicare recipients who had actually called Medicare to report that items (products/services) paid for on their behalf were not items that they received (or even needed).  For example, a woman said that she first contacted Medicare in 2003 to alert them that she never ordered, received or had any need for an electric wheel chair and other items that Medicare had paid for on her behalf.  Over the past 6 years she has received several such reports of Medicare payments for fictitious medical supplies (sometimes duplicate equipment) and every time she called Medicare to let them know.  She even asked that they somehow flag her account so that no payments would be made on her behalf without checking with her first since she has not been sick for 30 years... but apparently Medicare has taken no action.

You would think that Medicare would dramatically tighten its enrollment standards for vendors and have each one investigated for a period of time before permitting them to receive Medicare payments.  At the very least, patients should be called before payments are made for very expensive items to check that a physician did indeed recommend these items for them.  With $60 Billion at stake, it is inexcusable that even such low-tech, low cost measures as these have not been taken. 

 60 MINUTES ASKED HOW WE CAN EXPECT OUR GOVERNMENT TO RUN A HUGE NEW HEALTH CARE INITIATIVE WHEN THEY CAN’T EVEN RUN MEDICARE  EFFICIENTLY.....WE ARE ASKING THE SAME QUESTION

THE U.S. CONTINUES TO WASTE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN IRAQ

The U.S. has built hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects in Iraq, some of which will never be used [see Article by Associated Press Writer Kim Gamel, Sunday, August 29 on Yahoo News] 

Examples:  $165 Million Children’s Hospital in the South, unused

                   $100 Million Wastewater Treatment System in Fallujah, yet sewage still runs 

  in the streets  

        $40 Million prison sitting empty and probably will never see a prisoner

According to the Article, auditors have discovered that more than $5 Billion of the $50 Billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction has been totally wasted. 

We also looked at an MSNBC video that showed the multi-Billion-dollar massive new U.S. Embassy compound in Iraq.  It has 21 buildings on 104 acres with many amenities.  The maintenance cost is estimated to be $1.8 Billion every year.  

 PERHAPS OUR POLITICIANS HAVE FORGOTTEN THAT

WE NEED TO BORROW MONEY FOR ALL OF THIS