Now we’re begging: Will someone PLEASE bring back Glass-Steagall? The Glass-Steagall Act was, of course, the legislation passed in the early 1930s in response to a certain banking crisis that led to a particular Great Depression. Among other things, the Act erected a “Chinese wall” between a financial institution’s investment banking and merchant banking functions. In less complicated terms, the law forced banks to separate any business it was transacting on behalf of clients from the speculative moves it made with its own money. For the layman: banks can’t make dumb bets with clients’ money.

Sort of makes sense, doesn’t it?

Well apparently it seemed a bit stingy for President Clinton and the Republicans in Congress in 1999. We have Senator Phil Gramm and Representative Jim Leach to thank for that one. Here’s the problem: The heads of big banks have this terrible habit of thinking that they’re the smartest guys in the room. Anyone who doesn’t believe that need only watch Ben Bernanke talk for more than 30 seconds. Actually, let’s refine that a bit. The problem isn’t that banking executives think they’re savants, the real problem is that they aren’t.

In the modern financial age, a lot of very highly paid guys with impressive titles who look at way too many numbers and think they make sense have concocted some very complex “hedging” strategies for “managing risk.” They think they understand the crafty derivatives they’ve invented – which are completely unregulated and totally opaque – and all the counterparty risk involved. They don’t, and therein lies the rub.

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So President Obama is meeting in the White House tomorrow with BP’s chairman. The focus of public discussion of this event has been on it taking until the 57th day or so since the Deepwater Horizon rig caught fire following a well explosion, precipitating the ongoing oil leak.

The more relevant figure is 4,700. If my quick calculation has it right, that’s the number of days since the last time a BP CEO was in the Oval Office.

On that day, August 4, 1997, then-CEO, (then-Sir) John Browne, joined by Ken Lay, met in the Oval with President Clinton and Vice President Gore.

Their mission that day? As revealed in the August 1, 1997 Lay briefing memo whiih I was later provided — having left a brief dance with Enron after raising questions about this very issue — it was to demand that the White House ignore unanimous Senate instruction pursuant to Art. II, Sec. 2 of the Constitution (“advice”, of “advice and consent” fame), and to go to Kyoto and agree to the “global warming” treaty.

Oh, and to enact a cap-and-trade scheme.

Oddly, President Obama tonite will telegraph that he’s really going to stick it to BP tomorrow and give ‘em…the cap-and-trade scheme they concocted with Enron (spare me the hysterics, comrades, as I have detailed and explained in various ways here, here and here, I was in the room).

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Haiti is located on the western side of the island of Hispaniola approximately 700 miles southeast of Miami between Puerto Rico and Cuba.  The Treaty of Ryswick signed by France and Spain in 1697 resulted in the formation of two separate but incongruous states, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  The official language of Haiti is French and Creole while in the Dominican Republic it is Spanish.  The mostly black population is a result of slave trading when it was a French colony.

In 1897 through 1912 instability in Haiti drew attention to its strategic importance.  A small number of Germans maintained a large amount of economic power.  German military intervention during a Haitian revolt in 1902 and word that Berlin considered using Haiti as a fueling station for its naval fleet became a concern for the United States. Under the policies of the “Monroe Doctrine” President Woodrow Wilson began planning for the occupation of Haiti.

The occupation of Haiti finally ensued and the United States ruled Haiti through a military government from 1915 through 1934. Under military rule Haiti prospered through development of a road system, schools, improved disease prevention, medical care and communications.

Unfortunately the Haitians grew to resent the occupation of the United States and violent protests resulted in the deaths of many Haitians at the hands of the US military.  In 1934 the US left Haiti and the country became a dictatorship.

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You’d think for $53 million in federal funds — not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars from left-wing foundations — over the years, ACORN would be able to pay its own employees well. It turns out that while their employees have been caught treating taxpayer funds like trash, their own bosses have the same opinion of them.

The Washington Post, in a post mid-mortem of ACORN, took a moment to look at the group’s record as an employer and highlighted the group’s 2003 incident of busting a union drive by its own employees:

According to an NLRB case accusing ACORN of unfair labor practices, “field organizers were expected to work long hours each week — 54 hours — and were paid at a salary of $16,000 annually until January 2001, when the salary was raised to $18,000.”

The NLRB documented a high turnover rate for ACORN employees: In 2000, far less than 10 percent of Dallas office employees stayed in the job for six months, and “most did not even complete their training period, but quit within a few days or weeks of being hired,” according to the NLRB.

During the Clinton administration, the Labor Department accused ACORN arm Citizens Consulting Inc. of failing to pay workers overtime.

But wait, there’s more! There was ACORN suing to exempt itself from the minimum wage in California and repeated stories of it failing to pay its employees on time (see example):

It’s most ironic that ACORN has spent decades creating unions and telling everyone else how much to pay in “living wages” only to act as some sort of caricature of a bad boss from a 1920’s sweatshop.

Somebody, unionize ACORN! They deserve the union they get.