Newshoggers Archive: Corporatocracy 101 Part II

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Friday, November 6, 2009

Corporatocracy 101 Part II

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Yesterday we reported that we have the best government money can buy. We have yet another example today.

Goodbye to Reforms of 2002

It took just five weeks after the WorldCom accounting scandal erupted in 2002 for Congress to pass, and President George W. Bush
to sign, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. That law required public companies to
make sure their internal controls against fraud were not full of holes.
It took three more years for Bernard Ebbers, the man who built
WorldCom into a giant, to be sentenced to 25 years in prison for his
role in the fraud.
Mr. Ebbers will be 85 years old before he is
eligible for release from prison. He may be freed, however, before the
law is ever enforced on the vast majority of American companies. A
Congressional committee voted this week to repeal a crucial part of the
law. Other parts are also under attack.
Sarbanes-Oxley was
passed, almost unanimously, by a Republican-controlled House and a
Democratic-controlled Senate. Now a Democratic Congress is gutting it
with the apparent approval of the Obama administration.
The House Financial Services Committee this week approved an amendment to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 � a name George Orwell
would appreciate � to allow most companies to never comply with the
law, and mandating a study to see whether it would be a good idea to
exempt additional ones as well.

Yes, the lobbyists have their check books out and are pushing for special exemptions and don't forget it was special exemptions that led to the economic collapse we are now experiencing.

But this Congress has made clear that independence for the
accounting rule writers can go too far � particularly if the rules
force banks to reveal the horrid mistakes they previously made.
This
year, a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee held a
hearing at which legislators sought no facts but instead threatened
dire action if the chairman of the financial accounting board did not
promptly make it easier for banks to ignore market values of the toxic
securities they owned. The board caved in, which may be one reason why
banks are reporting fewer losses these days.
But the board�s
retreat was not enough to satisfy the banks. The American Bankers
Association is now pushing Congress to give a new systemic risk
regulator � either the Federal Reserve or some panel of regulators �
the power to override accounting standards. The view of the bankers is
that the financial crisis did not stem from the fact that the banks made lots of bad loans and
invested in dubious securities; it was caused by accounting rules that
required disclosure when the losses began to mount.

Get that? it was not the mistakes the banks made that led to the crisis but the fact that the banks were forced to go public with their mistakes. It may be Orwellian logic but it's good enough for lawmakers and yes a White House who's primary goal is to keep their sugar daddies happy.

Related:

Picture Of The Week Plus A Rant

So It Looks Like They Are Doing Something

We've Been Robbed

Further Down The Road To Fascism