Looks from that chart as if DiFi is keeping her options open this time around.

quelle surprise

Brown-Kaufman is going to get a vote, it looks like, which surprises me.

On that one, Obama will likely try to obscure his opposition and hope conservadems kill it.

Great diary!

First off-shore drilling, now this.

I gotta say — the guy’s got an impeccable sense of timing. *facepalm*

Strange to find myself agreeing with something Jim Bunning likes but there ya go – Strange Bedfellows and all that

Btw, Obama is framing his position as one upholding the independence of the Fed:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/06/white-house-explains-oppo_n_566449.html

“We oppose the Sanders amendment in its current form,” Wolin said. “Transparency of Fed is critically important… But we also think it is important that the Federal Reserve board have independence. We think that countries that have had… the perception of political influence in their central banks have had real problems.”

He’s got a Supreme Court nomination in the works. Pick your poison.

“We think that countries that have had… the perception of political influence in their central banks have had real problems.”

As opposed to the perception of private bank influence in their politics…?

Obama’s timing sucks I expect Rush to blame this on Obama too never mind he is against an audit. What’s Ron doing press release soon?

Does the Fed have Greece or other EU country funny debt on its books thanks to the bank bailout?

That means that the checks must have cleared.

I already decided I would never vote for Obama again because of HCR.
Not anything more I can do, I wish I could not vote for him twice.

Rush limbaugh is against audit the fed? Link?

At a time when confidence in the markets desperately needs shoring up, the President should be looking to instill confidence in investors by supporting accountability and transparency within the financial system — not acting to shield the banks.

Understatement of the year. These reforms would have helped prevent this there is nothing that can be done now . Greece falls we might see another bank bailout. In order to get the money Social Security would have to be cut.
Not a popular thing in an election year.
I bet nobody in the Media says end the Wars to find the money.

No but he will be if his puppet masters think we can pass this.

…there is no reasonable argument to be made for allowing the Chair of JP Morgan Chase to know what members of Congress can not.

Indeed.

Anyone not see through obama ,da bum?

Secret helps this country not one iota CIA, FED and the social security gutting commission just to name a few off the top of my head.
obama was picked for us.

The official debate on Senator Sanders’s Audit the Fed amendment is now underway, I believe to be immediately followed by a vote, about 80 minutes from now:

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2_wm.aspx

[The amendment was just called up, and is now the pending question, the reading of the amendment has been dispensed with by unanimous consent, and Bernie Sanders is speaking.]

President Obama needs to level with the public about his real priorities on this critical issue.

On any bloody issue.

Why would we want to audit the Fed? As usual, I’m with President Obama since I am sure he’s studying these issues thoroughly, and surely, there is a good reason to keep the secret rigged Fed out of the public eye. Let’s just do the Dodd bill. Goldman’s CEO was at the Obama speech in NYC in the front row and he was even reluctantly convinced by the speech that the Dodd bill is the way.

“President Obama needs to level with the public about his real priorities on this critical issue.”

More likely that Bernie Sanders poses nude for Playgirl. But in the past he’s been more careful to mask his opposition to progressive reform. He’s leaving himself exposed.

I’m astonished, but there’s actually a chance, albeit a small one, for real reform, and no one except the most deluded sycophant can deny that he’s one of the forces standing in the way.

btw, cheers to FDL for the usual really good analysis. thanks.

Greece has the EU and Goldman over a barrel Greece Either Germany or the International Monetary Fund step up or banks world wide start to record more losses.
International debt costs Spain, Italy etc jump American interest rates go up.

Our entire civilization is based on the Greeks. Let’s hope our people follow the example of the Greek people.

A people that accepts this kind of looting and chicanery without rising up deserves to get endlessly fucked over. Richly deserves it.

Jeebus, 980 points ?!! I unplug for 2 hours and the place goes to HEQQ !

The Rs are as a block against most of the financial reforms and they can rely upon their President to back them up one this. Too bad we couldn’t manage to elect a Democrat this term but maybe that will change in 2012.

There is an amazing irony to me that when I call my ID Senators (Crapo, Risch) they are supporting the Sanders amendment … and Obama is whipping to kill it. Strange days.

Neither were cosponsors yet when I called them. I had to put Risch’s guy on the spot (he kind of sounded waffley) and specifically ask if he was just saying he supported it while filibustering and then voting against it. Honestly, by his reaction I think our guys have been getting that a lot recently – he assured me that even though the bill sucks (sadly, it really kind of does, I had to agree) he would actively work to make sure decent stuff gets in there. I’m pleased to see they both are on the cosponsor list.

IMO, you can’t count on us for much, but Crapo’s solid on this and I’d put money on Risch too. This is a winning issue in Idaho … and now that Obama’s coming out against it; that’s just icing.

I wonder if Obama is hoping to peel Democrats away by playing up the popularity with the Republicans – implying they are helping the opposition. It would be exponentially ironic on several levels for Mr. Bipartisan if this turns out to be the case. First broadly bipartisan thing to come down the pike in quite some time … and he’s ‘agin it. Amazing.

I’m sure Obama is well aware of the dirty laundry of the Fed. Independence and accountability can coexist and often do. If the Fed is spending my tax money, I would like to know where it is going and why.

Don’t worry the good software arrived in the nick of time and battled the bad software. Now all is right with the market and the values favored by the good software are established.

Sanders is saying that the GAO is to do the audit. The possibility of a witch hunt always has to be considered (thank you, Richard Nixon), but the GAO has always been a professional agency, and I’ve never heard of a serious charge that one of their reports was politically influenced.

Apparently a significant bounce to recover a little.

off topic: Brooksley Born is working on Paulson on C-Span 3. She actually laughed at him couple of minutes ago. He’s laying it on thick, definitely not going well.

Senator’s husband’s firm cashes in on crisis; yeah, I know it’s the Times but…Fox news also carried the story.

DiFi also sent me a letter stating that marijuana is a narcotic.

Then of course there is Roberts and Hayden and FISA and on and on.

BTW, Jane, it was more than 1000 points down for a few seconds.

Obama and Gillibrand (D-Maiden Lane)will be visiting her peons constituents in Buffalo next Thursday.
Maybe they’ll be able explain today’s vote (I have no doubt what it will be) to the little people.

Me too!!

I’m gonna try an 11-dimensional chess argument (I know – grasping at straws). Here goes: Obama knows the Republicans will vote against anything he is for, so he comes out against it. Republicans – predictibly – are for it. It passes. O gets a bipartisan bill passed.

I really don’t believe this. Just throwing it out there for discussion.

I don’t know if Obama was purchased long before the election, or if it was afterward. Perhaps he was never purchased… perhaps they are threatening the life of his family. I don’t know. What I do know, now, after the healthcare fiasco, is that Obama has no desire to make any changes in the way this country currently operates. He’s not going to push real health care reform. He’s not going to reform Wall Street. He’s not going to help oppressed people in our society. He’s not going to clean up the environment.

So, basically, I really wish that this site would stop hoping he will. It’s getting us nowhere. We need to find viable candidates to get people like Obama out of office.

I would like to think that the promised votes mentioned in the article are valid. However, I think the promises about a public option pretty much show that Congressional promises mean nothing.

“Jamie Dimon is on the board of the NY Fed. He knows what they’re up to. No matter what excuse Obama offers for opposing the Sanders amendment, there is no reasonable argument to be made for allowing the Chair of JP Morgan Chase to know what members of Congress cannot.”

This is a fantastic point, Jane. The Fed has a governmentally mandated and sanctioned role in both regulation and setting monetary policy yet the fact of its ownership by the major banks (and associated board seats and private information) is not well known.

FWIW, the bounce of the lows was right at a major technical support level, and down 1000 is a major psychological buy point, as well. Only a temporary reprieve, the market will go back there, and probably a lot lower.

That was snark, right?

I mean, you didn’t really mean that, you were being facetious, right?

I want to have examples, not what they ‘think’ because I have no trust at all in the obama admin’s ability to think clearly.

Sen. Grassley’s up now on CSPAN2, speaking in favor of the Sanders Amendment. Says that if the government were performing this function, it would be our business to audit it. Since the Fed is doing it at Congress’s behest, it’s also our business.

no surprise which side the head pr man for the establishment falls on this …

Z

Senator Dodd is now a co-sponsor of Bernie’s Audit the Fed amendment, after the amendment was modified slightly just now, following discussions between Senators Sanders and Dodd (to address Fed independence concerns that Dodd had; he’ll be elaborating later).

Senator Grassley is now speaking in favor.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2_wm.aspx

WTF? Sanders just said he modified the bill, Dodd now a cosponsor

I think this (public statement from Obama) is progress. Senate dems will not walk the plank alone on this. They are forcing Barry out into the open.

Dodd mentioned that the amendment now permits a complete audit from Sept, 2007 on, IIRC. Sometime in 2007, anyway. Hopefully, someone in the press was more awake than I was when he said that.

Brownback (R-KS) is up now speaking for the amendment. No surprise there, he’s one of the cosponsors.

what concession did Bernie make?

I guess modification equals castration.

wow on Dodd co signing – although I’ll breathe easier once I see said modifications – have visions of Triggers and Opt Outs dancing in my head

Kabuki show, followed by abject capitulation.

Bambi’s veto finger is itchy if anything does get through. Don’t think he’d hesitate for a second, in between watching basketball and eating pretzels. Does he own a ranch in Texas somewhere too?

Maybe opposition to auditing the Fed should be Obama’s “Waterloo.”

Brush to be cleared.

the NYT article today said Dodd and the Admin were working on a companion amendment that could be substituted for Sanders, giving cover to those who wanted to say they voted for some type of audit. Looks like Sanders had sufficient votes to force them to negotiate with him, rather than subsitute for him. Just a guess. Trust in Bernie is where we are.

Does anyone have any idea of what they’re hiding up there at the Fed? Why are they fighting this audit idea so hard? I’m not very knowledgeable on this particular topic and would appreciate some more info.

the lying Obama who talks and walks like a progressive will be back in 2011.

now we are all stuck with Hopey Change Obama

good one, I think he has family in Texas

Found this Twitter message from Jonathan Weisman, a White House correspondent for the WSJ:

Looks like WH heads Sanders et al off at pass. Last second change to Fed audit amendment clrs way for passage. Big sigh in Geithners office.

Not a good sign, if true.

All that the market jumping signifies is that our lords and masters are indicating to their congressional property the extent of their displeasure with these faint hints of real reform.

This is just the first effort to weaken the already timid bills. The Admin also opposes the Brown-Kaufman Safe Banking Act — to cut the biggest banks down to size; the toughest features of Blanche Lincoln’s derivatives regulation, the reintroduction of Glass-Seagall, stripping deposit banks of their proprietary derivatives trading; and other stuff. Every liberal effort to strengthen the bill is either openly or surrepticiously opposed by Geithner.

Other odd bits:

Today, the FCIC is holding a hearing about Shadow Banking System.
Today, Sanders’ Audit the Fed now before Senate… for analysis, I rely on Jane. (Even Chuck Grassley was talking about auditing the fed – where are my smelling salts…!)

ZeroHedge is down.
Bloomberg was down earlier.
C-Span reporting heavy server use.

Glad FDL appears to be fine.

honey – go back up to the bottom of Jane’s table where it says “related posts” just a cursory read will yield all kinds of answers. then call the nearest Newark Library and ask them to reserve Secrets of the Temple for you – an intriguing primer and good read

Sanders is a major league caver. Always has been.

As for the dip on Wall Street, the Street is scared to death of an audit because it would show how insolvent everyone is and how the stock bubble is running off of Bernie’s ZIRP policies.

Remember all those Greek and Roman mythology books Dierdre and I checked out one summer when we were around 10-11? Those never got returned! I owe the Newark library a shit ton of money right now. LOL.

with the dollar at these ridiculous (and completely unsustainable) levels, what would be a ‘fair’ price for the DOW? 2000? 3000 tops. 1:1 with gold is on the cards.

What an amazing piece of theatre from our corporate overlords today:

nice over-10,000 Dow you’ve got there, be a shame if something happened to it, like an audit of the Fed.

I don’t know if Obama was purchased long before the election, or if it was afterward.

I think he was accepting bids during the campaign and was only put in harness in the first days of his term. Bush, on the other hand, was custom built for the job.

ask wifey to do it at school.

ZIRP or die.

That garbage policy is the only piece of string holding this house of cards together. If interest rates rise, playtime is over.

Dems are intent on going down with the ship? The one Obama keeps trying to knock holes in?

Wow. Have they no sense of self-preservation? Obama’s getting something out of this (not sure what it is, but surely he’s working to achieve his agenda, whether self-developed or not), but the elected Congressional Dems? What are they getting out of this but early retirement or minority status?

The other thing about Sanders is that this muddies the waters on the rotating villains meme. Sanders ends up as rotating hero, advocates for Fed audit, and rotating villain, caves. Now all the other designated villains can hop on board and do the same whitewash into hero-hood.

Something definitely smelly happening. Now Bennet-CO saying he’ll support Sander’s amendment per Huffpo:

UPDATE: Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who had previously voted against a previous iteration of an audit of the Fed, will support the Sanders amendment, his spokesman Adam Bozzi tells HuffPost.

Interestingly, on NPR’s report on the wild coaster ride of today’s trading, it was mentioned that there were some almost unbelieveable stock price gyrations. Such as P&G going from around 60 to down to around 40, then back up. It was stated that this does happen to such consumer goods stocks….

Hhhmmmm.

The Masters of The Universe – Goldman Sachs which runs the financial arm of the US Government does not want the public to know how much money was given out and to whom (US and foreign banking entities) with no benefit to the public except that the banks we use (the logos – the brand names – we are familiar with)are still open. We didn’t have to move our accounts or order new checks. That was the benefit to us. That, and the market didn’t crash.

They want to hide the numbers from us. It is devastatingly embarrassing. It could crash the market. The market is crashing based on the discussion of it. When it slides a little on any given day, Goldman is shorting it driving it deeper into negative territory. When it slides big time, Goldman is pushing it dowm farther.

Shorting stocks makes money in a down market. Goldman has the super computers that self adjust automatically to buy or sell short depending on market conditions. When the market goes down Goldman ias making money. When it goes up Goldman is making money.

This latest ‘recovery’ is the most staggering monstrosity of all of them. This one is completely 100% based on military spending and fraud. That’s your lot. There’s nothing else there. There is no longer a shred of legitimate economic activity left in your country. It is a zombie economy. It’s a freak show. A horror story. Hideous, mutated, toxic and lethal to all who come into contact with it.

In addition to the most excellent recommendations from cbl2, may I add this old FDL book salon

Talking Economic Accountability with Nomi Prins

The too big to fail banks (JP Morgan, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs) want to privatize profits from bets made with deposits insured by the taxpayers. When they lose those bets, they want to socialize their losses back onto the taxpayers.

Bernanke and Paulson (Treasury) bailed out Wall Street with $10 TRILLION in loans, guarantees, and capital injections in 2008. To put that number in perspective, the trust fund for Social Security is around $2.6 trillion. Iraq will cost about $3 trillion.

I wouldn’t cast Sanders as a villain. I am sure he knows that Obama/Rahm are going to go all out to protect the banks. So he’s using this to make life very uncomfortable for them and extract concessions of some sort.

I don’t know if Obama was purchased long before the election, or if it was afterward. Perhaps he was never purchased… perhaps they are threatening the life of his family. I don’t know. What I do know, now, after the healthcare fiasco, is that Obama has no desire to make any changes in the way this country currently operates.

i’ll vote for “he was purchased long before”. one small quibble: he does have a desire to make changes. he’s for helping corporations more than they’re already helped. witness pHarma, health insurance companies, off-shore drilling, more nuclear. what am i forgetting?

The Democrats and Obama are just as big corporatists as the Republicans. Again this is an elite thing. Our elites may be sinking the ship but it is still their ship, and they would rather sink it than relinguish control of it.

Someone needs to contribute some braaaains to this Zombie.

Or some balls.

One story, on one of the mainstream sites known for hype (CNBC), is that a trader entered a “b” for billion instead of the intended “m” for million. How one trader had control of that much value on the sell side is an interesting question. How that got everyone else to go along is another one.

Sanders caved on healthcare. He is a well known caver. On the important stuff, he always folds.

And as market makers they get a piece of every transaction that passes through their servers, which helps pay for all that fancy HFT software and colocation hardware.

Dear Tom Coburn:

Are you a United States Senator so that you can be an endless scold while refusing to offer amendments on a pending bill which has an increasingly-rare open amendment process ongoing, as you speak, ready and waiting for any and all “common sense” amendments you care to offer to address the problems you are rightfully highlighting…?? Or is it someone else’s job to “fix this bill,” rather than the job of a sitting Senator like you who’s actually read the bill?

Unclear at this point that it’s a cave:

In order to allay some of the White House’s and the Fed’s concerns, Sanders has agreed to limit the scope of what the Government Accountability Office would be allowed to audit–but his plan will still require thorough review of all the Fed’s emergency lending, beginning December 1, 2007.

“The way you would do it is to make sure that the audit is not looking at the open market policy, where you’re not looking at how interest rates are set,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said in response to a question from TPMDC, after a floor vote on a different amendment. “What you’re doing is looking at the actual financial transactions that the Fed is involved in.”

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/sanders-fed-audit-amendment-likely-to-prevail.php?ref=fpa

What is does, in any case, is loosen up the bill, which will its further loosening in conference.

As for Obama, we didn’t know enough about him to know whether he was being tactical in his election campaign or he really was as anti-progressive as he sometimes seemed. Even so I broke with him in July 2008 over the FISA Amendments Act, it was the last in a line of disturbing veers for me. It is very clear now that he was always in the pocket of the corps and what I saw then as veers were in fact just the underlying Blue Dog corporatist shining through.

Coburn does seem to like to hear himself talk. Shouldn’t he have had a “come to Jesus” moment with Brownback at C Street before coming to work today?!

If Dodd the biggest corporate whore in the Senate is onboard with Bernie Sanders’ audit plans, then I’m smelling a rat, a whole pack of them. You have to understand how much is at stake for Fed operations to remain opaque. A real audit would show their incompetence and that they took on huge amounts of bad repos. It would expose through the repo transactions how insolvent the rest of banking’s balance sheet is.

The only trade off that I can think of off hand is that hands off the interest rate setting would leave ZIRP intact and with it, at least for now, the stock bubble.

The corporate media is using OBAMA to destroy the progressive movement. They fear that american people will rise up like the GREEKS.

Obama is always portrayed by the corporate media like he is the second coming of FDR, LBJ, or JFK etc. at the end of the day he is just another BUSH.

SUN TZU says it best ALL WAR IS BASE ON DECEPTION.

The elites saw the american people desire for a true progressive to take over the white house in 2008 and they found a trojan horse name Obama that would help them keep progressives out of power.

Turns out I had the wrong month ending in “er”:

Sanders, on the Senate floor, hinted at the agreement. “Would allow the GAO to conduct a top-to-bottom audit of all of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending activities since December 1, 2007. In addition, the modifications require the Fed to put on its Web site all of the recipients of over $2 trillion in emergency assistance since December 1, 2007,” Sanders said.

from HuffPo

Well, we’ll see. Nothing in that article to indicate what the deal actually was.

Senators with character like that which so many of you claim to have would not cave, trick, steal, whatever.

Yet, they all do. Hmmmm. Maybe they are all disappointments. OR, maybe they are just ahead of the curve on how the game is played.

OR, maybe they are just ahead of the curve on how the game is played.

Which game? How to loot the country and fool the public? That one? If they were so far ahead of the curve, how come we predicted the housing bubble burst, recession, and meltdown, and they didn’t?

The how to acquire power and stuff game. And, yes, that often includes fooling and looting. You don’t think they predicted (or perhaps had a hand in) the housing burst, recession, etc?

I dunno, but I bet they came out of all that ok… probably better than you… one of the ones who believes themselves to be ahead of the curve.. ha ha.

The Titanic upper decks crowd?

I believe the stock market plunge this afternoon may well have been a warning by the Fed to the Senate not to pass the audit amendment; letting them know that they are really in charge. Remember when the market plunged right after the House rejected the Bailout Bill the first time around? It’s too much of a coincidence to suit me.

The only reason Bennett is supporting the amendment is he is up for re-election this year and his polling numbers are down against Lt. Gov. Jane Norton. The same can be said for Harry Reid who just reversed his position.

The way the Washington game is played it is a given that the political players will do fine. They have their current jobs, and even if they lose those some corp, law firm, consulting group, or think tank will grease their retirement. They don’t have to know anything for this to happen. All they have to do is vote the right corporate way and know the right people. A fool could do it. Even you could, but I repeat myself.

I think you may be right…

I love the irony that occurs within so much of the dialogue. It’s hilarious!

Cheerio, Hugh! You make great points!

Much easier to ignore oversight responsibilities if you can claim ignorance, and much easier to raise money if you ignore oversight responsibilies.

Examples- far too many to cite…

Boy all those people that thought just because the Market was back up that it could never go down again, and was a sign we had fixed the recession, I hope filled their shorts with a big load.

The Market didn’t foresee the Economic problems the financial crisis was based on, and was up until the crisis broke. Then it took a dive hurting many, and making the recession worse than it needed to be.

We are still fooled that the Stock Market runs our Country, and allow it to control us, distroy us or make us, at it’s will.

The big swings aren’t by the little investors, but the Billionaires and Large finacial interests playing on the news of the day. In other words more big gamblers, holding the Country in the palm of their hands by what they do with their money.

Close the Stock Market, and make stocks be issued by the Companies and rise and fall on the companies viability, and not by the whims of the Gamblers.

Not my President.

not by the whims of the Gamblers

Personally I’d be happy if this were the whims of gamblers, investors or even technical traders.
So far there doesn’t seem to be a good explanation of the down stroke but the rocket up was pure software.
Some folks think the drop was capitulation while others think that it was the HTF software chasing the trend. The boat capsizing because everyone moves from port to starboard. One of the big lessons is that the software that shot back up 600 points, effectively blowing money into the hole to bring the prices back up is the real power that determines of the value of the market.

At first I thought I heard what I wanted to hear from Obama, then I thought he was taking a go slow policy, after that, I thought he was getting bad advice. Now it is apparent he is no more than a door-to-door salesman of lies and deceit. Will we ever get a statesman or will we only get people who want to run a perpetual campaign. I am 61 and this deception hurts more than the scores I have encountered. WHere does that anger go?

Well said. And sad.

“At first I thought I heard what I wanted to hear from Obama, then I thought he was taking a go slow policy, after that, I thought he was getting bad advice. Now it is apparent he is no more than a door-to-door salesman of lies and deceit.”

Trust Bernie to get everything he can

The ‘O’ Must Go