Two Who Warned of Financial Crisis Win JFK Awards

[Hissyspit]

Source: Associated Press

2 who warned of financial crisis win JFK awards

From Associated Press
March 25, 2009 1:43 PM EDT
BOSTON - Two federal regulators who sounded early warnings about the financial crisis and a Liberian peace activist have been named the 2009 recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., was one of the first to warn about the subprime lending crisis, and has urged direct assistance to distressed homeowners as part of the effort to stabilize the economy. She has also criticized management of the financial meltdown by Wall Street and the government.

Brooksley Born, former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, warned a decade ago that unregulated financial contracts, including credit default swaps, could pose dangers to the economy.

- snip -

Leymah Gbowee will receive an award on behalf of the women of Liberia for her efforts in organizing a group of Christian and Muslim women that helped end the African nation's civil war. The awards for political courage announced Wednesday by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation will be presented May 18 by the former president's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, at a ceremony at the Boston library.

Read more: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20090325/49c9ba50_3ce2_1558620090325-1672216953

[Javaman]

1. Good for them.

but anyone paying attention saw this coming.

[DURHAM D]

3. Apparently not -

clear vision seemed to be predicated upon having female parts.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Nice find...thanks.

:kick:

[Tansy_Gold]

4. Bitter, bitter irony

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8291366

with thanks to Better Believe It and Skwmom


Obama's Toxic Advisers
By Robert Scheer
The Nation
March 25, 2009

Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who is independent in spirit as well as party label, has placed a hold on President Obama's nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Sounds like a minor issue to get worked up about, but the senator is right. Like most Americans, I am eager for Barack Obama to succeed, but I see this appointment as further evidence that the president has entrusted his economic policy to the wrong people.

Sanders' hold will not stop the Gensler nomination, because Congress and the president, recognizing the nation's mood, want to give Wall Street whatever it wants to make the stock market go up. And Gensler is a reassuring figure to the moguls of finance; he was a partner at Goldman Sachs before being brought by Goldman honcho Robert Rubin to the Clinton Treasury Department.

After Rubin left to take a $20-million-a-year job at Citigroup, which he helped run into the ground, Lawrence Summers, his protege and replacement at Treasury, elevated Gensler to be an undersecretary. Gensler then performed as Summers' point man in advocating for deregulation legislation that enabled the current debacle.

In congressional testimony supporting the radical deregulation of the financial derivatives market, Gensler had insisted with great enthusiasm that "OTC derivatives directly and indirectly support higher investment and growth in living standards in the United States and around the world." As to the many trillions of dollars in credit swaps that now afflict the world economy, Gensler specifically called for freeing swaps of this kind from existing government regulation in the Commodity Exchange Act, which regulated other futures such as wheat sales.


Yet when one member of the Clinton administration, Brooksley Born, then head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, attempted to sound a warning, she was treated by the rest of Clinton's economic team as the enemy.

more at

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090406/scheer?rel=hp_picks

[KoKo]

5. K&R

[Justice]

6. Should be Harry Markopolos nt

[librechik]

8. Indeed! n/t

[librechik]

7. Kick for Sheila and Brooksley--may they KICK Geithner and Summers OUT

and take over those jobs so they finally get done right!