The theme becoming familiar with all who are interested in the economy (judging by the latest labor statistics, I suspect there are many) is whether a president can actually create jobs. The answer to that question is obviously no; he can’t, at least not in a free enterprise system. However, a president can certainly pollute the environment and kill jobs as a consequence.

To whet your appetites and pique your interest, here is a list of job destroying regulations. Then consider Obama’s own recent retreat on EPA regulations and you see the proof.

1. NLRB’s Boeing Complaint

2. MACT and CSAPR Utility Standards

3. Boiler MACT Rules

4. Cement MACT Requirements

5. ‘Coal Ash’ Regulations

6. Grandfathered Health Plans

7. EPA Ozone Rule

8. EPA Farm-Dust Regulations

9. EPA Greenhouse-Gas Requirements

10.  NLRB ‘Ambush’ Elections Rule

Now Obama and his sycophants are saying his presidency is just as much a victim to the economic circumstances as the American worker and businesses. That’s saying something considering 14 million people unemployed and more than 25 million unable to find full-time work. In fact, President Obama and his government-first Democrat cohorts have actually made the economy worse and prolonged the recession.

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President Obama is on the campaign trail warning voters about “returning to the very same policies that failed us during the last decade.”

If he’s talking about bailouts, ineffective stimulus packages, and massive government spending, then we won’t be returning to them because we’ve never left in the first place. The continuities between George W. Bush and Barack Obama and their parties are far more disturbing than the differences.

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Late last week, at the 11th hour, the Senate removed an amendment that would have required the inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to investigate the corrupt ShoreBank bailout, as well as every other bailout since January 2009. It is the clearest sign yet that the White House and Democrats in Congress are covering up the truth. If there is nothing to hide, why block the ShoreBank investigation?

Even Rep. Barney Frank had publicly given his support to a ShoreBank probe. The bank claimed an investigation would delay the arrival of funds needed to keep it afloat. Yet Frank made sure that none of the banks being investigated would have had their federal assistance suspended (as the amendment originally provided). So there was no chance that ShoreBank’s bailout–if it were to be approved–would have been stalled.

Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times–who is close to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), the main political sponsor of the ShoreBank bailout–asks: “What exactly does Chicago’s ShoreBank have to do to survive?” But the real question she and other journalists must ask–and would ask, if this were any other bank–is: “What exactly are Democrats trying to hide?” If this Congress won’t investigate corruption, we ought to elect one that will.

In this week’s edition of of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, we’re talking about the fall of the Euro, the unemployment situation, and how Wall Street gamed financial reform on Capitol Hill. We’re brought to you as always by Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

TNL: The Trichet Put and EuroTarp
TNL: Republicans and the Volcker Rule
Pethokoukis: Wall Street Scores a Win on Finreg
Paul Ryan: Wall Street Reform Just More Crony Capitalism
TNL: Politics of False Promise: New Labour and Barack Obama

By now, readers of BigGovernment.com know that that the Democrats “Wall Street Bank” bill, which may get a final vote as early as this week, will reach far beyond Wall Street and ensnare businesses not typically thought of as “banks.” Stories here by this author and others have laid bare provisions of the Obama-Dodd-Frank-Everything’s-A-Bank bill that broadly define a “financial company” as any business “substantially engaged” or “significantly engaged”  in financial activities. And if your business happens to fall in such a category, it could be subject to a bailout “assessment” tax to bail out a high rolling financial firm, intrusive regulation by a banking agency or the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, or even outright nationalization if the troika of the Federal Reserve, Treasury Secretary, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation decide your firm is a threat to “financial stability.”

Trouble is, though its audience is growing by leaps and bounds every day, this site is still at the point in which not every American relies on it for essential political info. And because Republicans have done a mediocre job of explaining how far this bill would reach, and the establishment media largely has no interest in explaining these facts, supporters of Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s “Restoring American Financial Stability Act” have been able to get away with saying, “If you’re against this bill, you’re against reform of Wall Street.”

Or at least, that was the case until a couple days ago. That’s when Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) introduced an amendment with a straightforward message: A bill that claims to be about fostering transparency on Wall Street should itself be transparent in its objective and not sneak regulation on Main Street manufacturers and retailers.  Call it (and I just did) the Not-Everything’s-A-Bank Amendment.

Vitter has distinguished himself with his dedicated efforts in fighting for real financial reform.  He co-sponsored with self-proclaimed (but not necessarily sole) Senate socialist Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)a bipartisan amendment similar to the measure in the House bill to have the Government Accountability Office audit the Federal Reserve. When Sanders and others went for the Obama administration”compromise” of a one-time audit of a limited part of the Fed’s operation, Vitter carried the flag of Fed transparency.

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News reports last week suggested that 130 companies that cater to main street concerns — like Harley Davidson — had hired lobbyists because of the impact the financial reform legislation will have on their business. The regulatory boondoggle will affect almost every entity that caters to middle class America — from car dealers to dentists. That’s right dentists.

News from Washington is that the group representing America’s dentists are now in freakout mode over the bill. Most dentists offer payment plans. If Johnny need braces, dentists offer payment plans that help the middle class afford them. If the financial reform bill is enacted into law, the federal government would regulate the plans.

This is a prime example of how the legislation — while proporting to regulate Wall Street will actually regulate Main Street.

Yet Citi and Goldman Sachs are supporting the legislation supposedly aimed at them. If Wall Street wants this bill and Main Street is harmed by the bill, how exactly is this Wall Street reform?

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From The Hill:

The world’s top-earning hedge fund managers have bankrolled almost exclusively Democratic campaigns.

The top 10 highest-paid hedge fund managers in 2009 have dished out campaign contributions almost only to Democrats. 

Over their lifetimes, those managers have given almost $33 million in campaign contributions to Democrats, according to research by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and that is based on data maintained by the nonpartisan CQMoneyline.

The same managers gave roughly $600,000 to Republicans, according to the research. The contributions went 98 percent to Democrats and two percent to Republicans.
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It’s time for your weekly dose of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your home for conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we discuss the upheaval in the marketplace in the wake of Greece’s problems and we talk about the White House plan, as advocated by Steny Hoyer and Paul Volcker, to institute a VAT.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

TNL: What Republicans Should Have Done About Financial Regulation
Andy Xie: The Chinese Housing Bubble
Obama: “At a certain point, you’ve made enough money.”
Hoyer: Shared Sacrifices Will Solve Debt Crisis
TNL: What the Tea Party Movement is Really About

As Democrats continue to up the volume on their deceptive campaign to pass a new government takeover and bailout bill for bit Wall Street Banks, apparently there is some nervousness about the pressure Democrats are directing at the two Republican Senators from Maine. The mystery group Committee for Truth in Politics is back up on the air in the Pine Tree State with an ad opposing the Big Bank Bailout.

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Last week, in CFPA Czar or Fox in the Hen House? You Decide, I brought you more details about the people and structure of the ACORN-esque Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) and the Center for Community Self Help (CCSH) as part of a series of pieces we’ve been writing about the financial crisis and the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).

The importance of the pieces in this series cannot be understated.  As Congress faces down a massive power-grabbing partisan financial reform bill this week, it seems to have lost sight of many of the causes of the financial crisis in the first place.  While we hear about the exemptions in the bill of institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the stories we’ve been covering on CRL and CCSH further illustrate the dangers of unchecked entities and a government with too much intervention and far too much power.

At the peak of the subprime mortgage boom and the subsequent financial crisis, primary donors to CRL and CCSH basked in billions of dollars in pure profit, thanks in large part to that very intervention and power.

Next, we’re going to introduce you to the questionable lobbying activities of this complex organization.  But before we do, let’s review a few pertinent details from our previous posts about this organization:

• John Paulson is the largest single donor to the Center for Responsible Lending.  Paulson owns one of the world’s largest hedge funds, and most recently, the SEC has alleged “that Paulson & Co. paid Goldman Sachs to structure a transaction in which Paulson & Co. could take short positions against mortgage securities chosen by Paulson & Co. based on a belief that the securities would experience credit events.”
• Herb and Marion Sandler are the second largest donors to CRL, and together with Paulson appear to comprise the majority of the organization’s funding.  The couple owned GoldenWest Financial/World Savings bank, before selling it for over $2 billion to Wachovia, which tanked shortly thereafter
• Eric Stein, who once worked for Fannie Mae (an institution currently exempt from regulation in the financial reform bill), was also the longtime leader of CRL and Sr. Vice President of CCSH.  Today, Stein sits in Obama’s Treasury Department in charge of crafting the current financial reform legislation and the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).

Now, onto the lobbying.

A complaint that was filed with the House, Senate, and the IRS alleges that CRL, CCSH, and its vast network of non-profit and for-profit companies may have committed serious violations of the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) and the Honest Leadership in Open Government Act (HLOGA).  The complaint was filed in the Fall of 2009 by the Consumers Rights League.

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Sen. Bob Corker is close to cutting a deal with Sen, Chris Dodd to re-regulate the 5/6ths of the economy that isn’t touched by Obama Care. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. (Perhaps this is related to the over $3 million Corker has collected from Big Wall Street Banks. Just saying…) His office number is 202-224-3344.