The Dodd-Frank Solution to a Drowning Economy? A Cement Life Preserver

My latest post on Newsreal Blog.

Nowhere but Washington would the same control-freak clowns that pushed the economy down a well be put in charge of its rescue. But here we are, treading water and looking upward in horror as Barney Frank (D-MA), Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Maxine Waters (D-CA) dangle our supposed salvation: a cement life preserver filled with the same bureaucratic power grabs and social engineering that pushed the economy over the edge in the first place.

The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform bill – which is as good as law thanks to a couple senate RINOs – will, among other things, unleash an army of bureaucrats to breathe down the necks of bankers and make sure they prioritize race and gender over financial expertise during the long arduous recovery from previous onslaughts of government meddling. 

Diana Furchtgott-Roth at Real Clear Markets: 

In addition to this bill’s well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications.

The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency’s workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors. […]

Lest there be any narrow interpretation of Congress’s intent, either by agencies or eventually by the courts, the bill specifies that the “fair” employment test shall apply to “financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services.” That last would appear to rope in law firms working for financial entities. […]

If the director decides that a contractor has not made a good-faith effort to include women and minorities in its workforce, he is required to contact the agency administrator and recommend that the contractor be terminated.

The racial quotas are a gift from Waters, everybody’s bossy big sister who once famously said those concerned about the pre-meltdown health of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “trying to fix something that wasn’t broke.”

Well, lucky us. She is still here, demonstrating more such logic and prescience by insisting that prioritizing race over creditworthiness had nothing to do with the avalanche of foreclosures that panicked the banking system in 2008 and threw the economy into a tailspin. Such myopia would explain why she thinks imposing more racial quotas will save a system brought to its knees by racial quotas.

Waters explained in a July 1 press release:

 “I wrote this legislation to make sure that federal financial regulatory agencies ensure diversity in their hiring and promotion, as well as in their contracting, so that competent and qualified minorities and women and minority-, women- and small-businesses have a seat at the table.”

If she keeps poisoning the economy this way, there won’t be any seats. There won’t even be any table. And there will be no need for quotas, because the only discrimination from the economic misery she will visit upon all Americans with her incompetence will be for her and other Washington elites like Dodd and Frank.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

…  It effectively puts affirmative action into every financial transaction and gives the government a huge opening for interfering with economic growth on the basis of bureaucratic whims.  Anyone who has dealt with an EEOC issue will understand the arbitrary interventions this will create — and the damage it will do when every contract and trade can get suspended based on a complaint or even suspicion of violation.

Anyone interested in system stability would have struck these requirements the moment they first appeared.  This is a disaster in the making, and yet another indication that Democrats want to exploit the financial collapse for their goals in social engineering. 

And why not, when it has worked so well in the past? They will continue to run our lives in comfy Washington as long as they can buy themselves votes with our grandchildren’s money.

That will go on until their constituents wise up.