The Deconstruction Era

 Deconstructing The Capitol Dome

When the Republicans were victorious at the 2014 mid-term elections, I said to myself that now they have two years to botch things up in their own idiosyncratic way.
I hoped very much that they would not, but by and large Republicans are not conservatives as I am; I read The American Conservative, whereas most other Republicans take pleasure in things like The Drudge Report or Breitbart or even worse, things like NewsMax.

Of course, Democrats reading material is often hardly better.

In the BBC this morning, updated at 2:31 AM:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30443960

...The US House of Representatives has passed a $1.1tn budget, hours before government was due to shut down at midnight on Thursday...


As presented earlier in the week, the 1,600-page bill also includes a number of provisions intended to gain votes from both parties, including:

• increasing the amount an individual person can contribute to a national political party from $32,400 to $324,000
• blocking the District of Columbia from using its own funds to set up regulatory systems for marijuana legalisation
• measures that would significantly weaken financial regulations in the Dodd-Frank law, including restrictions on derivatives trading
• blocking certain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations
• cuts in the budgets of the EPA and the US tax agency
• increases in the budget for Wall Street regulation agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission...

Looking at the underlined sections, I am quite sure that the increased risks of weakening Dodd-Frank will not be mitigated in any significant manner by the increases in the budgets of Wall Street regulatory agencies.

The bill allows for banks to make risky loans with funds that are tax-payer insured.

This means that the chances for another future bail-out has just increased significantly.

If you recall, in 2008 none of the Wall Street regulatory agencies could do anything effectively to stave off the financial crisis.
And the same thing will be true in... say, 2017... to use my favorite "black hole" year as the example.

Since this is a modest example of what is in store when the new Congress begins next year.....
make your own prognosis.

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