Hysteria Over Watts Appointment Misplaced
Democrats who hope, and Republicans who dread, the appointment of Mel Watt as a sign the Administration has suddenly decided to aid the victims of foreclosure fraud are both kidding themselves.
The criminality of the banks with wealth to steal, the apathy of the captured regulators with private sector careers to protect, the avarice of legislators with campaigns to fund, the cronyism of attorneys who desecrate the Rule of Law, the complicity of judges with pension funds to protect, and the silence of the 4th estate lacking the will to publicize this malfeasance will likely continue unabated with this pay-back appointment.
Watt infamously was one of the traitors who introduced SOPA – designed to stop “online piracy.” But piracy by banks and securities firms – his primary donors – is apparently okay. Watt was missing in action during the JP Morgan “London Whale” hearings, and as the Charlotte Observer indicates, on pretty much everything of note on the banking front since Dodd Frank passed back in 2010:
As his fellow members of the House Financial Services Committee prepared to fire questions at JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon over risky trades, Watt was in a meeting in another part of the House office building.
By the time he made it to the hearing room, he’d missed his chance to get in the questioning queue.
He left early, without speaking.
Watt, who played a primary role in crafting the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, has retreated into the background on banking issues since the law passed in July 2010.
At a time when banks have found themselves in political firestorms, Watt has made fewer floor speeches on banking and introduced fewer bills on the subject. And he hasn’t issued a single public statement on banking in the two years since Dodd-Frank passed.
Watt told the Observer that this was a conscious decision and a result of the committee’s polarization since Republicans captured control of the House.
Soooo…it’s the Republicans fault he missed the hearings because those meanies “weren’t listening.”
Although it’s hard to decide which is worse – Republicans like Senator Robert Pittenger who, in a letter to the Editor appearing in The Observer today blames the economic collapse on poor people who somehow duped the most powerful industry in the world into allowing them to buy “houses they couldn’t afford,” and who, despite multiple regulatory investigations, bank fines and hearings, recently claimed to have “never heard of” foreclosure fraud. Or Democrats like Watt, who introduced Dodd-Frank then promptly quit attending hearings on the bill after receiving Bank campaign cash, saying the hearings didn’t matter because the Republicans “weren’t listening.” (Maybe they were listening instead to Joyce Bradbury, Watt’s chief of staff of a decade who is now a Goldman lobbyist.)
Democrats blame Republicans, and Republicans blame poor people, while both keep bowing down to bankers who are laughing all the way to the Fed, who continues to pay them 85 billion of our tax dollars each month.
There has never been an administration who is more in bed with the money men, lobbyists and crony capitalists who would use our tax dollars and natural resources to enrich themselves at the expense of our freedom and the future of our Republic. Yet instead of calling them out on it, Republicans seem intent on taking credit for it.
Watts appointment is irrelevant – what it says about both sides of the aisle is not.
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