What the hell is Barack Obama's presidency for?

[ProSense]

19. Let's

"Democratic Party as a corporation - their first priority is to stay in business provide a return for investors and pay salaries for their executive staff."

...test that theory.

SEC Will Require Companies To Report CEO-To-Worker Pay Ratios
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023694931

Regulators Finalize Stricter Volcker Rule - Reuters/HuffPo
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024158305

NLRB to Prosecute Wal-Mart For Violating Workers’ Rights (updated)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024053560

2013 Was a Bad Year for Wall St. Lobbyists

Everyone assumed the banks would beat financial reform. They didn't

BY MIKE KONCZAL

2013 was a not-awful year for financial reform. If you aren’t terrified of jinxing even the smallest good news, you might even say it was pretty good. The multi-year implementation of 2010’s Dodd-Frank bill made several final advancements this year, and compared to where people thought we’d be a year ago, we are in a pretty solid place...nobody thought that banks would face tougher holding requirements for capital, that regulations of the financial derivatives markets would advance, or that the final Volcker would be a pretty good start instead of an incoherent mess. Yet that is what appears to have happened in 2013. So what caused it? And how it might apply to future political goals?

The successes of 2013 were partially driven by the failures of Wall Street in 2012. The multi-billion dollar trading losses from JPMorgan Chase known as the “London Whale” changed the dynamics for financial reform in a way that took a year to realize. JPMorgan had been leading the charge against reform, arguing that the effort was over-harsh and destructive, and that Wall Street had already cleaned up its act on its own. Indeed, the big concern in 2012 was that Wall Street would convince enough moderate Democrats that Dodd-Frank had gone too far in certain respects, and that Congress would stop regulatory action before it was even completed. This fell apart right alongside the multi-billion dollar losses in JPMorgan’s position...JPMorgan’s London Whale trades also drew clear lines on whether reform would work. In 2012, one of the major battles had been over how aggressively to make foreign affiliates of U.S. banks follow U.S. rules. The London Whale helped the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler, push for aggressive implementation over European criticism; he argued that the London Whale was a continuation of the supposedly bygone practices that led to the financial crisis. JPMorgan’s failure also gave new energy to, and a clear target for, the stalled Volcker Rule, which was designed to split hedge funds from banks.

Financial reform benefitted as well from engaged activism that proposed tougher reforms, which pressured regulators to hit the mark and kept the financial industry on the defensive. This is clearest in the case of capital requirements, which require banks to hold a set percentage of their assets and which the finance industry fights consistently. To many people’s surprise, the U.S. ended up with tougher capital requirements than people anticipated, with more to come next year. Ideally we’d see double-digit capital requirements with extra requirements for larger firms that fund themselves with panic-prone funding. Regulators didn’t get there on the first try, but still came in stronger than originally proposed. And they are making stronger steps on the second part.

<...>

Senators Elizabeth Warren and John McCain also pushed a new version Glass-Steagall earlier this year. It also didn’t gain much support, but still put some steel in the spines of the Volcker Rule’s authors, as Glass-Steagall was being proposed by many as an alternative reform if the Volcker Rule failed.

- more -

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116064/2013-financial-reform-went-way-better-anyone-expected

Obama pushes to limit federal spending on corporate executive pay
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022927167

Executive order on federal contracting means real action on economic mobility

By Heather C. McGhee and Amy Traub

When it comes to boosting economic opportunity, President Obama isn’t going to wait for Congress anymore...the President made a powerful statement about employers’ obligation to reward work -- starting with his own obligation as the executive in charge of millions of federal contracts.

In a study we released last May, Demos found that nearly two million private sector employees paid with federal tax dollars through contracts, loans, grants, leases and health spending, earn wages too low to support a family. These are people working on behalf of America, doing jobs that we have decided are worthy of public funds—yet they’re being treated in a very un-American way. That’s why federal workers have been walking off the job for the last year...Now the President has taken a major step to lift up hundreds of thousands of those workers. In the process, the president will help families work their way up out of poverty and give new momentum to efforts to raise the minimum wage for everyone laboring too hard for too little in today’s low-pay economy.

The truth is that preferring contractors who pay workers at least $10.10 an hour will have benefits far beyond the workers themselves and their families. When our tax dollars subsidize and promote the creation of low-wage jobs rather than positions that enable workers to afford the necessities of life, there is a ripple effect throughout the economy: poorly-paid workers have less to spend in their communities, and businesses facing less consumer demand in turn hire fewer workers, stunting economic recovery. Low-paid workers also contribute less in taxes and more often need public benefits to provide for their families....From the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act onward, the idea that the federal government should be a model employer – and that employees working on behalf of the public should have strong workplace protections – has an extensive history in our country. The use of executive orders to improve the employment practices of companies granted federal contracts also has a long precedent. Beginning in 1941, successive presidents from both parties signed executive orders aimed at preventing employment discrimination by federal contractors. President Obama’s order raising wages for companies that do business with the federal government follows this successful precedent.

If the cost of federal contracts is a concern, the spotlight should be not on the employees who will finally see a raise to $10.10 an hour, but rather on the over $21 billion a year the government spends on the pay of their bosses, the top executives at contracting firms. After Demos put a number on this subsidy of executive excess in a September report, Congress included a lower maximum pay reimbursement for contractors in its December budget deal. But even the lower cap still provides executives a roughly $234.00 an hour subsidy. When you consider that our current contracting system fuels inequality through both lavish compensation for CEOs and poverty wages for front-line workers, it becomes clear where cost-cutting efforts should be focused.

- more -

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/196837-executive-order-on-federal-contracting-means-real-action

BOOM: Obama signs order to raise minimum wage for federal contractors...disabled workers included!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024489919