Citizens' Daily Lobby

InArkansas has a nice report this week tracking the green portion of Arkansas’ stimulus money.   Arkansas received $110 million for energy projects last year.  Here’s a rough breakdown of the major recipients of this money and what it will do for the state:

Arkansas Department of Human Services $48.1 million to help low-income families become more energy efficient.  Low-income individuals often live in the least efficient homes, and they pay a disproportionate amount of their income for energy needs. The stimulus funds are expected to help weatherize 6,500 homes by 2012.

Arkansas Energy Office: $39.4 million to fund 13 environmental energy projects.  Most of the money will be used for energy efficiency improvements in public and private buildings.

Local goverments:  $16 million for various projects, largely for energy efficiency.  Kudos to Conway, for its plan to implement a synchronized traffic light system that will save gas, time, and frustration for local motorists.

This doesn’t quite total $110 million.  A table would have been helpful in the article.   I’m sure I could find the missing $7 million in the article if I took the time to sort through all the figures.

Back on October 20,  “Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg hinted to ABC News that the gap between expectations of compensation on Wall Street and Main Street might just be unbridgable.  He is right.  Had he gone on to tell Wall Street that those playing the Street with taxpayer money would answer to taxpayer expectations, he might have made history.  Instead, he chose to actually raise the base salary of many executives of companies that received TARP bailout funds,  according to a Wall Street Journal story this week.

We, the taxpayers, do not care what type of compensation Wall Street executives expect to receive.  We do not care that they have grown accustomed to lavish lifestyles.  We have become accustomed to putting food on our tables, and many of us are struggling to do so during the financial crisis that these very executives brought upon us.  Thom Hartmann reminds us today that household income fell last year to the lowest levels since 1997, and middle and low income families were hardest hit.

Today, the Senate voted on an amendment to the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations bill (HR3288) that would prohibit stimulus funds from being spent on signage giving credit for improvements to stimulus funding.  The amendment, S Amendment 2361, was rejected.  Blanche Lincoln voted for this amendment, and Mark Pryor voted against.    American taxpayers probably spent more for Senate salaries during the time spent in consideration of this amendment than they would have saved had it passed (it didn’t).  Trivia.  Petty politics by Republicans who don’t want the Democratic Congress and President Obama getting credit for any positive, tangible results of the stimulus package.

More meaningful were several amendments proposed by Senator McCain to block funding for mass transit projects nationwide.

The address to Wall Street given by Pres. Obama today is a breath of fresh air for battle-weary and discouraged Progressives.    The message was terse, but strong, as Mr. Obama chided some Wall Street execs for their quick return to the risky behaviors that brought on the current financial crisis:  Wall Street will be more tightly regulated again.  Finally.

We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses.  Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.

Mr. Obama emphasized that the Administration is looking to work with the financial industry to ensure that regulations do not stifle the economy, but he made it perfectly clear that regulation to promote “transparency and accountability”  would come with or without the support of  Wall Street.

And taken together, we’re proposing the most ambitious overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression.  But I want to emphasize that these reforms are rooted in a simple principle:  We ought to set clear rules of the road that promote transparency and accountability.  That’s how we’ll make certain that markets foster responsibility, not recklessness.  That’s how we’ll make certain that markets reward those who compete honestly and vigorously within the system, instead of those who are trying to game the system.

What is the plan, specifically?

1) New rules to protect consumers and a new agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to provide oversight.  -There is currently no single agency in our government charged with protecting us from financial fraud, and that needs to change.

2) Closure of the legal loopholes that allowed the financial crisis to occur.   President Obama listed a few examples:

Under existing rules, some companies can actually shop for the regulator of their choice — and others, like hedge funds, can operate outside of the regulatory system altogether.  We’ve seen the development of financial instruments — like derivatives and credit default swaps — without anyone examining the risks, or regulating all of the players.  And we’ve seen lenders profit by providing loans to borrowers who they knew would never repay, because the lender offloaded the loan and the consequences to somebody else.  Those who refused to game the system are at a disadvantage.

…And that’s why we’ll create clear accountability and responsibility for regulating large financial firms that pose a systemic risk.  While holding the Federal Reserve fully accountable for regulation of the largest, most interconnected firms, we’ll create an oversight council to bring together regulators from across markets to share information, to identify gaps in regulation, and to tackle issues that don’t fit neatly into an organizational chart.  We’ll also require these financial firms to meet stronger capital and liquidity requirements and observe greater constraints on their risky behavior.

3) Creation of  “resolution authority” (aka ending the idea that some firms are “too big to fail”).

With so much at stake, we should not be forced to choose between allowing a company to fail into a rapid and chaotic dissolution that threatens the economy and innocent people, or, alternatively, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill.  So our plan would put the cost of a firm’s failures on those who own its stock and loaned it money.  And if taxpayers ever have to step in again to prevent a second Great Depression, the financial industry will have to pay the taxpayer back — every cent.

4)  Work with world leaders to ensure global financial stability.

For this President, and for our country, “normalcy will not lead to complacency.”   Someone must stand between the consumer/taxpayer and those whose only motive is profit.