United Liberty

Even with Americans still struggling to keep with high gas prices, President Barack Obama yesterday targeted the oil industry with more proposed regulations — once again offering nothing in the way of real solutions to increase oil supply. The Los Angeles Times notes that Obama wants more money for regulators and more penalties for what “manipulation” of the oil market:

Facing heat for high gasoline prices, President Obama tried to shift the focus to Congress, Republicans and energy traders, calling for legislation that he said would “put more cops on the beat” to crack down on potential manipulation of the oil market.

Obama called on Congress to provide more money for regulators and increase penalties for market manipulators. The president, flanked by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., suggested that traders and speculators are affecting the price of oil and digging into Americans’ pocketbooks.

“We can’t afford a situation where some speculators can reap millions while millions of American families get the short end of the stick,” Obama said in brief remarks in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. “That’s not the way the market should work.”

Obama’s proposal would add $52 million to the budget for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees oil futures markets, to pay for improved technology and additional employees. The president also proposed increasing the maximum civil and criminal penalties for manipulative activity in oil futures markets and beefing up data collection.

With a financial crisis still causing unrest in Europe as governments try to bailout each other out, the Vatican is calling for a global governing authority and a global bank as the religious institution slams markets:

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

President Obama, who is supposedly a tireless crusader against Wall Street excesses that allegedly lead to the financial meltdown a couple of years ago, is now apparently trying to change his stripes and convince those same Wall Street folks that he’s the best choice for them.

From the New York Times:

The guests were asked for their thoughts on how to speed the economic recovery, then the president opened the floor for over an hour on hot issues like hedge fund regulation and the deficit.

Mr. Obama, who enraged many financial industry executives a year and a half ago by labeling them “fat cats” and criticizing their bonuses, followed up the meeting with phone calls to those who could not attend.

The event, organized by the Democratic National Committee, kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash — in part by trying to convince Wall Street that his policies, far from undercutting the investor class, have helped bring banks and financial markets back to health.

Last month, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, traveled to New York for back-to-back meetings with Wall Street donors, ending at the home of Marc Lasry, a prominent hedge fund manager, to court donors close to Mr. Obama’s onetime rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And Mr. Obama will return to New York this month to dine with bankers, hedge fund executives and private equity investors at the Upper East Side restaurant Daniel.

If they buy it, they deserve everything that happens to them in regard to financial regulations that hamstring their ability to function.  Honestly.

My former colleague, Maxwell Borders, knows exactly why American health care is so expensive. He gives a list of ten reasons (hint: the first has something to do with the tax code).

For those who prefer visual stimluation, Max is not the sort of fellow to let anyone down. I’ve added a videos produced by Max on the topic of health care reform below. You can watch the follow-up video here.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down over 1,300 points since “The” Bailout passed the House on Friday. This bill was suppose to save the markets at the expense of the people, but what if the markets and the taxpayers both dont like it? Too bad we are not in a parliamentary system where a vote of no-confidence like this means the current regime will likely be gone in the near future.