If one was looking for fiery, crowd pleasing, political rhetoric from former Speaker Newt Gingrich as he addressed CPAC today, they were likely disappointed. What Gingrich did do was run through a litany of policy solutions he claimed he has committed to implement immediately upon taking office in January of 2013.

Contrasting an America that can versus an America that can’t, Gingrich compared America’s speed and might in winning WWII versus her current inability to seal its own border. In a lighter moment, the former Speaker contrasted the efficiency of package tracking by Federal Express with the government’s inability to track illegal immigrants, suggesting sending each one a package may be the best way to apprehend the latter.

He also mentioned repealing Obamacare, Dodd Frank, and Sarbanes Oxley on his first day in office. He stated his desire to be a “paycheck president” versus a “food stamp president,” a term he used to denigrate Barack Obama.

Calling for a Fall campaign focused on substance, Gingrich also mentioned eliminating the Capital Gains tax and implementing 100% expensing for all new equipment written off in one year to help get the economy growing. Additionally, he called for a modernization of the workforce, proposing that unemployment compensation be linked to business training programs to avoid paying people for 99 weeks “for doing nothing.” (more…)

The most successful Obama campaign meme–repeated ad infinitum by the mainstream media–is the idea that the country is saddled with a “do-nothing Congress.”

The implication–brilliantly conveyed, though completely untrue–is that we have a “do-nothing Republican Congress,” though in fact the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has been extremely active.

It would be more accurate to say that we have a “do-nothing Senate“–by design, since it’s clear that the Demcorats’ leaders in the Senate believe that legislative gridlock works to their political advantage. It’s been nearly 1000 days since the Demcorat-controlled Senate even passed a budget–a violation of the Congressional Budget Act.

With tomorrow’s official unemployment number looming, and with today’s ADP employment report for December 2011 suggesting some improvement could be on the way, it’s worth asking what happened to Obama’s “Jobs Bill”–without which, he warned, “there will be fewer jobs.” Voters wanted Washington “to do something big and something bold,” Obama said–even if it was a stimulus packed with boondoggles and bailouts, much like the “Porkulus” that launched the Tea Party.

Lo and behold–there is a little bit of life in the job market; manufacturing is improving moderately; and consumer confidence, while still shaky, is up significantly from where it was when Obama was demanding his jobs bill.

And no jobs bill was enacted. (more…)

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama plans to use a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as head of the country’s new consumer financial protection watchdog, sidestepping Republican congressional opposition to his pick.

“Today in Ohio, President Obama will announce the recess appointment of consumer watchdog Richard Cordray,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer announced in a tweet.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law to police the market for consumer products such as credit cards and mortgages.

(more…)

When asked about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in October, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren praised it to the hilt. “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” she told the Daily Beast. Yet when pressed in November on the OWS adherents’ increasingly violent tactics, she told a Boston TV interviewer: “Everybody has to follow the law. There’s no exception on that.”

But Warren’s apparent disavowal of the tactics of OWS and like-minded community organizers may not be shared by Richard Cordray, President Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Warren designed. Cordray has long supported ESOP, formerly known as the East Side Organizing Project, an Ohio housing advocacy group that has distinguished itself by storming into banks and launching plastic “shark attacks” on the lawns of private homes. ESOP’s leaders brag about what they call their “organized hits” on banks and other targets, which have included the home of the late Congressman and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp.

As Ohio treasurer and attorney general, Cordray lobbied for state and federal funding for ESOP and publicly praised funders of the group as “the real heroes.” And in a highly unusual move for a nominee awaiting confirmation, Cordray returned to Ohio in October to be the keynote speaker at the group’s gala dinner.

Since his nomination in July to head the bureau created by the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law, Republicans have held fast against confirmation. But largely, they haven’t made Cordray’s state record an issue. They have focused instead on structural defects in the agency’s design, such as the massive new powers the bureau will have to ban financial products it deems “abusive” and its lack of accountability to Congress.

These criticisms are valid, but they may not be enough to hold Senate Republicans together without criticism of the nominee’s merits. Just before Thanksgiving, Scott Brown (R-Mass.), facing a tough reelection challenge from Warren, became the first GOPer to commit to voting for Cordray. The Democrat-controlled Senate plans to hold a vote on his confirmation this week, possibly as early as Tuesday. Human Events‘ Neil McCabe reports that in addition to Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, other GOP targets for Cordray supporters include Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Tennessee’s Bob Corker, and Cordray’s home state Senator Rob Portman of Ohio (though Portman seemed to reaffirm his opposition in a statement to Human Events last week).

But Cordray’s support of ESOP needs further scrutiny, particularly since as head of the bureau, he will have the power to help funnel federal support to ESOP and like-minded community organizers with virtually no oversight by Congress. And a report by Bloomberg News suggests that Cordray specifically blessed ESOP’s “organized hits” on banks and homes.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts is expected to announce his retirement from Congress on Monday, closing out a career of more than three decades capped by passage last year of legislation imposing new regulations on Wall Street.

Frank’s office says he will hold a 1 p.m. news conference in Newton, Mass. to make the announcement.

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When Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) was convinced by a retailing giant to enact legislation imposing price controls on credit card transactions he engineered a massive wealth transfer from credit card companies to retailers – a cost that would ultimately be borne by consumers.  Opponents of Durbin’s fee warned of the consequences of his actions including increased costs for consumers and elimination of credit card incentive programs.  As Milton Friedman said, “there is no free lunch.”

After the government imposed their fee cap, the marketplace responded predictably.  Banks, including Bank of America, raised fees on consumers in order to cover the cost imposed by the Durbin Amendment.  Caught with his tail between his legs, Durbin and his allies declared war on the banks.  In a letter to the newly codified Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Durbin accused banks of trying to “sneak fees past” consumer and “urge[d]” the CFPB to “swiftly require financial institutions to post on their websites a standardized, concise and consumer-friendly disclosure form that lists the fees and key terms associated with checking accounts.”

Whether Durbin is successful in fighting back remains to be seen but what we do know is we now have a government agency at the disposal of elected officials that will police marketplace policies, fee structures and pricing decisions.  If it’s not bad enough that the Bureau will make regulatory decisions based on the political whims of politicians, their own justification for regulations are worse.  Much worse.

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We at MRCTV were in New York City’s Zuccotti Park in late October, and one of the things we wanted to do was see how much the people protesting actually knew about…what they were protesting.

Shortly before we left, New York Magazine conducted an experiment called, “Are You Smarter than a Wall Street Protester?” in which they asked a series of questions to the brave soldiers in attendance.

Given the study was done with a pen and paper, Joe Schoffstall figured he’d ask questions and record it on video. In fact, the questions are almost exactly the same- so most of these people could have been polled by the magazine, having an advantage to this basic knowledge quiz.

Joe asked 6 questions to the protesters, in which we’re breaking down into 2 videos of 3 questions each for length reasons. The following questions are in this video (Part I):

1. What is the Dodd-Frank Act?

2. Who is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve?

3. Who is Elizabeth Warren?

Here are their responses:

The Answers:

(more…)

Elizabeth Warren might just be the motivation that conservatives need to get behind the re-election campaign of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA). Until now, the Tea Party activists that helped push Brown to an historic victory in 2010 had been grumbling about Brown’s leftish voting record. But Warren’s embrace of tax-and-spend policies, and her disregard for constitutional checks and balances, are giving conservatives new reasons to care.

I once admired Warren–and told her so. I was a student at Harvard Law School when she was plucked from her teaching job to serve as the congressional “oversight czar” for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In that role, Warren stood out for her unique willingness to criticize Obama administration appointees, notably treasury secretary Tim Geithner, for failing to comply with basic transparency and reporting requirements.

Warren had also been extremely popular among her students–so much so that our graduating class awarded her the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award in 2009, even though she hadn’t taught since the previous fall. I hadn’t had the privilege of being in one of her classes, but I congratulated her on the award, and told her that as a conservative, I felt she was speaking for me, too, in holding the Obama administration accountable.

But something seemed to change once she joined the administration. (more…)

Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) made the following statement to the House Chamber on October 26, 2011:

Mr. Speaker:  The government’s continuing failure to address our nation’s gut-wrenching unemployment stems from a fundamental disagreement over how jobs are created in the first place.  We are now in the third year of policies predicated on the assumption that government spending creates jobs. We have squandered three years and trillions of dollars of the nation’s wealth on such policies, and they have not worked because they cannot work.

Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that same dollar OUT of the economy. True, we can SEE the job that is saved or created when the government puts that dollar back into the economy.  What we can’t see as clearly are the jobs that are destroyed or prevented from forming because government has first taken that dollar OUT of the economy.  We see those millions of lost jobs in a chronic unemployment rate and a stagnating economy.

Government can transfer jobs from the productive sector to the government sector by taking money from one and giving it to the other.  That’s at the heart of the President’s plan to spend billions of dollars to hire more teachers and firefighters and police officers.  But these temporary government jobs come at a steep price: every dollar spent sustaining one of these jobs is a dollar taken from the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available to productive businesses to invest in creating permanent jobs.

Government can also transfer jobs from one business to another by taking capital from one and giving it the other. That’s how we got Solyndra.  We put a half-billion dollars at risk to create 1,100 jobs (that’s $450,000 per job).  Now that half-billion dollars are gone and so are the jobs.  And who pays for these losses?  Other businesses and their employees – meaning fewer jobs created.

(more…)

The #OccupyWallStreet movement has an agenda and has made it available for all to see.  Among their demands is that government eviscerate existing contracts by “eliminating all debt, everywhere.”  Imagine there was a government agency with the power to make decisions like that.  With a sleight of hand, one person could vitiate contracts and overturn years of business decisions, destroying marketplaces through government intervention.  You don’t have to imagine very long.  If President Obama and his progressive supporters get their way, the Director of the newly created regulatory agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will have similar powers.

Created by the flawed Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, the CFPB Director will be the most powerful regulator in government with little checks and balances from Congress.  President Obama said last week that if confirmed, the Director of the Bureau would be able to overturn any private market action it deems abusive.  Obama specifically cited the increase in debit card fees as an example of an area where the CFPB could take action to overturn the fee.

Let that sink in for a moment. A legitimate, legal business in America raises its prices by $5 and some bureaucrat would veto it, or worse, punish the business for raising its prices – in order to “make less profit,” as the president said.  This is the world Obama and the Democrats seek, a world in which an elite few are empowered to override the marketplace based on their own whims or, in this case, to mollify their voters.

No one likes bank fees, but in a market economy, you could take your money from one bank and move it to another. Avoiding this and keeping you happy is what keeps your bank in line. That’s how the market works, but that’s not good enough in Obama-world. On this fantasy island, the government singlehandedly keeps the electoral mobs happy through the utilization of a financial death squad. It’s government by organized mob.

This case becomes even more ridiculous when you consider the fact that the reason the banks are adding new fees is to cover the cost of a new federal price fixing law that took billions from banks and allocated it to giant retailers like Wal-Mart. And even more absurdly, the pricing fixing law that caused the fee increase is the very same law that created the agency that Obama wants to use to overturn the fee increase.

(more…)

From Reuters:

New York City’s securities industry could lose nearly 10,000 jobs by the end of 2012, according to a report by New York state’s comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the Wall Street Journal said.

In a report due for release on Tuesday DiNapoli also said bonuses were likely to shrink this year, reflecting lower profits on Wall Street, the WSJ reported.

(more…)

Congressional hucksters sold last year’s “Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” as a pro-consumer effort to prevent future big bank bail-outs. The good news, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, is that Dodd-Frank expanded big government payrolls by nearly 3,000 new positions and seven new agencies. The bad news is the bill has destroyed 130,000 private sector jobs, will cost consumers $11 billion in fees, and is doing a fine job of creating a new American bank crisis.

The U.S. House and Senate took only 21 days to pass the Dodd-Frank Act. And it was signed into law by the President on July 21, 2010 as the largest overhaul of banking in our nation’s history. The massively complex Act is 2,300 pages long and a masterful piece of crony capitalism, which explains why Congress passed the bill before anyone could actually read it.

The public was deeply concerned by the rushed passage and has never been in favor of the legislation. A recent poll by FTI Consulting found that only 12 percent of the public were satisfied with bill, while 54% were dissatisfied. A large majority, 66%, believes the act is insufficient to protect against future bailouts. These opinion polls are about to go from concerned to downright angry as the public begins to learn how much pain they will suffer.

I estimate that the Dodd-Frank Act will cost banks in the United States $22 billion annually. Approximately one third of those losses will come from the “Durbin Amendment”, which was secretly inserted into the bill for the sole benefit of the merchandise retailing association. The language in the Act directs the Federal Reserve to set debit card swipe fees that “are reasonable and proportional to the cost incurred by the issuer.” Although this language looked innocent, it had the effect of cutting the $.44 per swipe fee banks receive to $.26 per swipe. When multiplied on the 180 million debit cards outstanding, the banks are required to transfer $7 billion of profit to the retailers. To survive crony meddling by Congress in their private industry affairs, the banks have no choice but to begin firing another 130,000 staff and directly charging consumers for their losses.

(more…)

Team Obama is out and about mourning a “double-dip recession,” while Fed head Ben Bernanke is warning of a faltering economy. I have described the current economic environment as the front end of a recession.

But Obama’s populist, class-warfare attack on millionaires and billionaires, his new war on bank profits, his linking arms with the protesters occupying Wall Street, and his big-government stimulus plan will surely not solve this crisis.

The September jobs report underscores the economic alarm. The unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent. But the rate of marginally unemployed (U6) jumped from 16.2 percent to 16.5 percent. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 103,000 while private payrolls gained by 137,000, small-enough increases to dodge a recession bullet right now. But nearly half those job gains came from the return of 45,000 striking Verizon workers.

And while the small-business household survey showed an encouraging jump of 398,000, it turns out that an even larger 444,000 are only working part-time. So household employment — excluding the part timers — actually fell by 46,000. That’s a discouraging sign. At the same time, worker earnings are rising less than the inflation rate. That’s a consumer drag on the economy.

(more…)

From Reuters:

President Barack Obama launched a broad onslaught against banks on Thursday, tapping into public anger over rising fees to garner populist support ahead of his 2012 re-election campaign.

Obama, a Democrat who is pressing his case for re-election with unemployment stuck above 9 percent, said his Republican opponents’ primary plan to boost the economy involved rolling back financial reforms his administration fought to pass.

Obama spoke at a White House news conference after thousands of anti-Wall Street demonstrators protested at New York’s financial district and in several U.S. cities this week against economic inequality and the power of U.S. financial institutions.

(more…)

The White House has denied pressuring Ford to pull its ad that criticizes competitors that took and have yet to repay taxpayer dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. However, the Obama administration can’t deny a new gift it showers on General Motors and Chrysler in its package of tax hikes to pay for its so-called American Jobs Act.

For all the talk about fairness and equity with the so-called Buffett Rule, there is one sneaky loophole in the Obama revenue proposal that has largely escaped notice. In doublespeak that would make even George Orwell do a doubletake, President Obama’s “financial crisis responsibility fee” would tax banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses that have paid back their bailout money — and even some firms that never took a bailout — to pay the tab of irresponsible firms, namely the auto companies that still owe the government billions.

“We also ask the largest financial firms — companies saved by tax dollars during the financial crisis — to repay the American people for every dime that we spent,” President Obama proclaimed in the Rose Garden two weeks ago. But the details of this “responsibility fee” in the 80-page plan the president submitted to the Joint Committee on Taxation makes it clear that this fee will only be on firms that have already repaid the TARP funds and likely on some firms who never took a dime of taxpayer money.

(more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Benjamin Johnson:

Bad economic policies have consequences. Senator Dick Durbin thought the big, greedy banks were making too much money and regulated their profits.  Our President, eager to jump on the ‘Government Knows Best’ bandwagon offered his support and signature to the Dodd-Frank Bill. Accuracy in Media teamed up with Let Freedom Ring to find out what happens when banks are forced to comply with government price controls. Just as predicted, the customer gets a shake down.

(more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Kelly Cobb, Government Affairs Manager for Americans for Tax Reform to discuss the section of the Dodd-Frank bill that institutes price-controls on debit card transactions, how this new law is effecting banks and how the changes mean a worse, not better environment for consumers.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Little saved from lower debit fees
Like your free checking account? Prepare to say goodbye
ATR Will Rate a Vote on Tester Interchange Fee Amendment
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President Obama and the Democratic Party effectively turned every controversial issue they faced over the past three years into a potential crisis, and convinced the American people to support their solutions without question to avert presumed dire consequences.  Important works of legislation capable of changing the American way of life were passed on the basis of “we have to pass this now – or else!”  Mr. Obama is preparing to face the nation again with another speech that will proclaim urgency and use panic to get his legislative desires passed.  We need to recognize what has been going on and put a stop to it.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the stimulus bill, was quickly passed by the Democratic controlled House and Senate without real debate in order to keep the unemployment rate from rising above 8%.  With unemployment at 9.1%, and over 17% when considering all those who stopped looking for work or are working part-time, that crisis was not averted.  All the stimulus bill did was to spend $800 billion of tax payer money to pay government workers salaries for one year and for a few temporary road construction projects.  The law did not provide any incentive for self-sustaining employment and our economy is now facing another recession.

The Patient Protection and Affordability Act of 2010, Obamacare, was crammed through the Democratic controlled House and Senate against overwhelming protests by the American people. All this ideologically designed legislation accomplished, with over 2,700 pages and the creation of 159 new bureaucracies, was to create uncertainty for employers and push up the cost of health care insurance.

The recently passed Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the last piece of hastily formed legislation passed by the Democratic controlled House and Senate before the November  2010 election shifted power in the House to the Republicans, is an empty bill passed for political purposes leaving its substance to regulations yet to be written.  Our nation’s banking system is now paralyzed by the uncertainty of what will be in those regulations.

From Cash for Clunkers to cash for Solyndra, everything this administration does is preceded by “pass it now, there is no time for debate.”  Economic conditions are difficult for most Americans and with 14 million citizens unemployed and an estimated 25 million Americans in total who are unemployed or under-employed, families are hurting and it would be easy to proclaim a crisis and cause panic.

(more…)

I first met you less than a week ago. Back then you were still just “Bob.”

Yes, now it’s “Honorable Bob.” (laughs)

What are your first impressions, on your first day on the job?

I was impressed with the warm welcome, the collegial spirit. I met with a lot of people today. The New York delegation was particualrly helpful and friendly. I was introduced on the floor by Charlie Rangel. We had a nice chat. The New York group works together on a number of things, which was good to hear. Joe Crowley explained a few things to me that we can work together on. It was all very positive. I walked in feeling there was more contentiousness, but didnt see that at all today.

What is your number one priority as a new Member of Congress?

My priorities right now are all logisitics–to set up the offices, both here and in the district, to get the right staff and the right flow of information from the constituents to the office, and get the right legislative agenda and priorities set up. I also want to try to get on the right committees. That’s a function of availability and interest.

Speaking of that legislative agenda, what’s the first thing you want to accomplish?

I’m primarily interested in the impact of the Dodd-Frank bill on New York State and New York City. We’re the world’s financial capital–banking, insurance, trade, commodities, et cetera–and a lot of the impact, or the unintended consequences, of Dodd-Frank will fall on New York, and we are only beginning to sift that out now. That is going to take a little direction, fine-tuning, and even elimination of parts of that law to protect New York jobs and growth in these areas. I’ll be paying special attention to that. (more…)

On September 6th, Senate Democrats will hold a confirmation hearing on Richard Cordray, President Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)– a new regulation producing machine created by the Dodd-Franks bill. The Democrat Leadership in Senate is using the hearing to pressure the Republican Leadership to bow, allowing the liberal’s dream of a single agency that can regulate any financial transaction in America to become reality. Without your input and pressure, it might.

As we already know, the CFPB was designed to be a regulatory agency “one like we have not seen before,” according to Senator Chris Dodd. Originated by Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB is created to be a “one-stop” shop to regulate all consumer financial products in America – from mom-and-pop store layaway plans to mortgage loans and applications. The Bureau was given unprecedented regulatory powers with no checks and balances while the head of the CFPB is an unelected bureaucrat who can pick and choose what industry to regulate.

Obama’s first pick for this dictatorial position was anti-capitalism crusader Elizabeth Warren who was resoundingly rejected. No matter who the head of this agency becomes, it has too much unmitigated and unaccountable power.

That is why back In May, 44 of the 47 Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent a letter to Obama vowing to block any nominee to serve as director of the CFPB absent key changes, including eliminating the director’s position in favor of a board and forcing the agency to be dependent on Congressionally appropriated funds for its operating budget.

Democrats apparently believe that their problem the first time was that they had the wrong nominee to head the agency. So now, President Obama has nominated lesser known but every bit as liberal trial lawyer Richard Cordray to assume the position of dictatorial ruler over US businesses.

(more…)