Politico has the article Whatever Happened to Overtime? : It’s one reason we’re poorer than our parents. And Obama could fix it—without Congress. by Mick Hanauer. The article is written by a wealthy capitalist who is trying to explain to you how he and his fellow capitalists are taking advantage of you.  He’d prefer for you voters to change the rules so he won’t have to do  this, but until you do, he and the others will continue to do this.

This is the part of the article I decided to focus on as I read the beginning.

But what about the most basic need of all—jump-starting the real economy by giving more middle-class Americans a fair shake? You would think that for a Democratic administration, raising the threshold back to where it once was would be a no-brainer, but I have grave doubts that administration officials are heading in this direction. In fact they are likely to raise the threshold only partly, and the Obama administration has not yet grappled with the broader question of how moves such as this are critical to helping to restore America’s middle class. How do I know? Intuition. OK, I admit it, more than intuition. I’ve had conversations with administration officials about their forthcoming policy changes. And the scuttlebutt out of the Labor Department looks promising—for corporations. Not the middle class.

It is my sense, based on my conversations with government officials, that the administration is buying the line from corporate lobbyists who are arguing that such rule changes would devastate their bottom lines, forcing them to lay off workers. You know, the old trickle-down gambit—if workers earn more money, it would be bad for business, the economy and workers. The Obama team, in other words, is buying into the same discredited theories that were used to erode the threshold in the first place. Officials will very likely raise the overtime threshold just enough to say they’re doing something, without actually doing much of anything for the middle class or our demand-starved economy at all.
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What very few Americans seem to understand is that that extra trillion dollars isn’t profit because it had to be, or needs to be or should be. That extra trillion dollars is profit because powerful people like me prefer it to be. It could have been spent on your wages. Or it could have gone into discounts to you, the consumer. We capitalists will tell you that our increasing profits are the result of some complex economic force with the immutability and righteousness of divine law. But the truth is, it is simply a result of a difference in negotiating power. As in, we have it. And you don’t.

This part focuses on what Obama has failed to do, but could still do to help the middle-class.  This goes along with my continuing thesis that the Democrats lost big in the last election exactly because they were not doing all they could to help the middle-class.

As I read more of the article, I realized there was much more to it.  Unfortunately for you, I am not going to quote it here.  You’ll have to read it yourself.

It goes a long way to explain why I am retired and getting richer, while you may be working and getting poorer.

New Economic Perspectives has the article The Wall Street Journal Still Refuses to Grasp Accounting Control Fraud via Appraisal Fraud by William Black.

I’ll give you the beginning of the article.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) report described one of three epidemics of accounting control fraud that drove the financial crisis in these terms.

“Some real estate appraisers had also been expressing concerns for years. From 2000 to 2007, a coalition of appraisal organizations circulated and ultimately delivered to Washington officials a public petition; signed by 11,000 appraisers and including the name and address of each, it charged that lenders were pressuring appraisers to place artificially high prices on properties. According to the petition, lenders were ‘blacklisting honest appraisers’ and instead assigning business only to appraisers who would hit the desired price targets” [FCIC 2011: 18].

The FCIC Report then documents scale of this epidemic of loan origination fraud.

“One 2003 survey found that 55% of the appraisers had felt pressed to inflate the value of homes; by 2006, this had climbed to 90%. The pressure came most frequently from the mortgage brokers, but appraisers reported it from real estate agents, lenders, and in many cases borrowers themselves. Most often, refusal to raise the appraisal meant losing the client” [FCIC 2011: 91].

And here is the conclusion of the Black’s analysis of the Wall Street Journal article.

No bank officer was sanctioned administratively by the regulators, sued by them, or prosecuted. No enforcement action is described as being taken by the OCC against any bank. The OCC is not described as adopting any rule. The OCC is not described as having made a single criminal referral. If this is what the WSJ thinks describes a “wary” regulator’s response to a fraud epidemic then they are delusional. I have explained in prior articles that the head of the OCC is an anti-regulator who has expressly refused to make ending control frauds led by bank CEOs a regulatory priority. Note that the OCC not only failed to use the word “fraud” to describe appraisal fraud, it also attributed the endemic appraisal fraud to preposterous explanations such as insufficient staff “training” and “oversight.”

To what can we attribute the absolute refusal of regulators to see any fraud when the evidence of the fraud has been presented to them for over 14 years?  What can we expect for investigations of this question from the Republican leadership of the House and the Senate in the next two years – Benghazi?

Is it any wonder that voters are disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans who cannot agree on anything except for “more money for fraudulent bankers is good for the economy”?