The Congressional Black Caucus’ TARP/TALP Access Summit drew a SRO crowd of minority and women-owned professional services companies.
The CBC is pushing for the inclusion of diverse firms for the same reason that President Barack Obama pushed out General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner: The federal government should not reward failure.
Today’s discussions are a critical step in addressing barriers faced by minority and women-owned business enterprises to participate in the TARP and TALF programs.
It’s insane that the $700 billion bailout program is being managed by the same people who are responsible for the financial meltdown. The biggest contractor, Bank of New York Mellon, was so mismanaged that it needed $3 billion in TARP funds.
For Rep. Maxine Waters, co-chair of the CBC Economic Security Taskforce, diversity is in taxpayers’ interest:
It doesn’t make sense to trust just a few of the same old Wall Street firms with trillions of taxpayer dollars, especially since some of them are the same ones responsible for the crisis Americans are in now.
In recent weeks, we have heard much about prominent banks and other institutions being “too big to fail.” Today America’s minority- and women-owned business enterprises are exclaiming, “We have experience and qualifications that can help America out of the economic crisis, and we are too numerous to ignore,” and the CBC will make sure this does not fall on deaf ears.
It's also about accountability. The inclusion of minority-owned businesses must be the metric by which black folks measure whether the Obama administration is listening.
There’s been some serious efforts to deal with a combination of long-standing problems in the auto industry. What we’re trying to let them know is that we want to have a successful auto industry, U.S. auto industry. We think we can have a successful U.S. auto industry. But it’s got to be one that’s realistically designed to weather this storm and to emerge at the other end much more lean, mean and competitive than it currently is.
And that’s gonna mean a set of sacrifices from all parties involved — management, labor, shareholders, creditors, suppliers, dealers. Everybody’s gonna have to come to the table and say it’s important for us to take serious restructuring steps now in order to preserve a brighter future down the road.
A lot of dealers and their employees have already sacrificed: In the past 14 months, approximately 1000 dealerships have closed and 50,000 employees are out of work; thousands more have been laid off.
In many instances, minority-owned dealers are far more susceptible to lose money faster because the businesses are typically first-generation operations with smaller cash pools to ride out economic downturns.
That was a far cry from his earlier outing. Geithner wilted under pointed questioning by Rep. Maxine Waters.
In a must-read Rolling Stones piece, “The Big Takeover,” Matt Taibbi writes:
The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.
One of those insiders, former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson, is Geithner’s chief of staff.
Now get this: Goldman Sachs doesn't want to be held accountable for how it’s using our money. So, it reportedly plans to pay back the TARP funds by mid-April. Call me suspicious but will Goldman Sachs repay taxpayers’ money with taxpayers’ money laundered through AIG?
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has widened his investigation of AIG to see whether Goldman Sachs was improperly compensated. The New York Times reports:
The new inquiries shine a spotlight on a question that is exponentially bigger, in dollars, than the $165 million in bonuses that A.I.G. paid out this month, but which has been overshadowed until now by the uproar over the bonuses.
Our investigation into corporate bonuses has led us to an investigation of the credit default swap contracts at A.I.G. CDS contracts were at the heart of A.I.G.’s meltdown. The question is whether the contracts are being wound down properly and efficiently or whether they have become a vehicle for funneling billions in taxpayers’ dollars to capitalize banks all over the world.
Similarly, Rep. Elijah Cummings has asked Neil Barofksy, inspector general for TARP, to investigate AIG's payment to counterparties:
We would like to know if assessments were made of the health and total exposure risks of counterparties, such as Goldman Sachs (which, for example, claimed it had no material exposure to AIG), Barclays, Deutsche Bank and others. If such assessments were made, by whom were they made and what were the criteria guiding the assessments?
Further, was any attempt made to renegotiate and close out these contracts with “haircuts?” If not, why not? What was the benefit of the decision to pay 100 percent of face value to the American taxpayers who provided the bailout funds and how did it support the goal of ensuring the stability of the economic system?
The Congressional Black Caucus is determined to tear down the walls of the old boys' club.
On Monday, March 30, the Congressional Black Caucus will convene the CBC TARP/TALF Access Summit to ensure minority and women-owned businesses have meaningful opportunities to participate in TARP I and II, and other programs designed by Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The summit is free. For registration information, go here.
Because of the life John Hope Franklin lived, the public service he rendered, and the scholarship that was the mark of his distinguished career, we all have a richer understanding of who we are as Americans and our journey as a people. Dr. Franklin will be deeply missed, but his legacy is one that will surely endure. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to his loved ones, as our nation mourns his loss.
Rep. Barbara Lee, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said:
For many African Americans our first introduction to black history was through Dr. Franklin’s book “From Slavery to Freedom.” In its pages we found an account of American history that affirmed the dignity of black people and the nobility of our struggle.
Dr. Franklin was not only a noted historian, but also living history himself. His accomplishments are as many as they are great.
One of Dr. Franklin’s earliest and most important contributions was as a member of the team of scholars who worked with Thurgood Marshall to win the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education.
Today we greatly mourn Dr. Franklin’s passing and the loss of his wise counsel, but we will be forever grateful for his lasting contributions.
Dr. Franklin was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit to get reparations for the survivors of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, during which his father's law office was burned down by a white mob.
We who were blessed to stand in this giant’s shadow and to have felt
his touch will continue to use his teachings, wisdom, warmth and
strength to ensure that his efforts are forever appreciated. We will
mourn but we will not be stopped.
I only knew Dr. Franklin through his work, but I did get a chance to meet him at a congressional hearing.
This breaks my heart. This hurts in ways I never imagined. John Hope Franklin was a giant and we will miss him in unimaginable ways. He was our Tulsa race riots hero and helped us bring national attention to this issue.
There will be a celebration of Dr. Franklin's life and of his late wife Aurelia Franklin on June 11 in Duke Chapel. In the meantime, the family has asked that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the:
Aurelia W. and John Hope Franklin Endowed Scholarship Fund at Fisk University c/o Office of Institutional Advancement 1000 17th Street North Nashville, TN 37208
Dr. Franklin will be missed. May he rest in peace.
During President Barack Obama’s second prime-time press conference, ABC News’ Ann Compton asked:
QUESTION: Yours is a rather historic presidency, and I’m just wondering whether in any of the policy debates that you’ve had within the White House, the issue of race has come up, or whether it has in the way you feel you’ve been perceived by other leaders or by the American people. Or have the last 64 days been a relatively color- blind time?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I -- I think that the last 64 days has been dominated by me trying to figure out how we’re going to fix the economy, and that’s -- affects black, brown and white. And you know, obviously, at the Inauguration I think that there was justifiable pride on the part of the country that we had taken a step to move us beyond some of the searing legacies of racial discrimination in this country, but that lasted about a day.
And you know, right now the American people are judging me exactly the way I should be judged, and that is, are we taking the steps to improve liquidity in the financial markets, create jobs, get businesses to reopen, keep America safe?
And that’s what I’ve been spending my time thinking about.
Indeed, the hope of Inauguration Day seems a distant memory.
Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden, told ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”:
Let us not lose sight of the people who really haven’t come into this conversation yet, middle-class folks who are facing an 8 percent unemployment rate, African-Americans, facing a 13 percent unemployment rate, over 20 million people underemployed right now.
Marc Morial, president and CEO of the Urban League, said:
For the first time we have a president whose political base is in a city so we feel that he can better understand
the issues and concerns of urban America. We want to make sure that we work with the
administration to ensure that urban America is included in the policies coming forth to help this country recover
economically. Only then can we begin to close the equality gap.
Morial added:
President Obama has stressed that change comes from the bottom up, not the other way around. It is up to all of us – as citizens and advocates – to take a more active role in governance at all levels to make sure our voices are heard from City Hall to the State House to the halls of Congress to the White House.
Let's hope Obama gets the message. If the President is not thinking about closing racial gaps now, when will he?
If you are concerned about the ballooning budget deficits, then set your TiVo, PVR or alarm clock for the PBS’ Frontline special, “Ten Trillion and Counting,” an investigation of the causes and solutions to the projected $10 trillion federal deficit.
It remains an open question whether anyone will ask about Sen. Judd Gregg’s claim that Obama’s budget will bankrupt the nation. Gregg is Obama’s former pick to head the Commerce Department.
We can’t count on the legacy media to ask tough questions. So, we need to get informed and then take action. The AIG mess is a reminder that when we the people voice our outrage, politicians run for cover to the microphone.
My spirits were lifted by the soulful sounds of “Emancipation’s Jubilations: Spirituals and Songs that Led a Nation,” a recital based on songs that President Abraham Lincoln loved or heard at a contraband camp. Songs such as “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “John Brown’s Body,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Let My People Go” and “Steal Away.”
I am not surprised the songs that inspired Lincoln are also some of my favorite spirituals.
A while back, I headed up a virtual think tank, the Douglass Policy Institute, whose name was a tribute to Frederick Douglass. I have a deep and abiding affinity for Douglass, but my heart belongs to that other transformative giant, Mr. Lincoln.
BTW, no TV cameras or recording devices were allowed at the press conference. For a Web 2.0 administration, it was back to the future -- pen and pad only.
