Well, it seems that for all the commercials and bluster that Senator Lincoln piped on about during the primary elections she’s still more about back scratching than the moderate mantra, i.e. BS, of her primary electioneering.
In one of her commercials she said (and I’m mostly paraphrasing here) that she introduced some of the toughest banking reform regulations of any Senator in DC and “it’s gonna pass”. Well we are getting some of the details of her tough financial reform and how it’s going to operate. As usual it’s the same old crony crap that we expect out of our ruling elite in Washington, DC.
The original “reform regulations”, as stated in this WSJ report, “proposed allowing banks with less than $10 billion in assets to continue to count existing trust-preferred securities toward capital”. If you had more assets than that you couldn’t count these controversial “equity/debt” hybrids which have been implicated in the current financial crisis. Well, that just wouldn’t do for Ms. Lincoln for you see there is one particular Arkansas bank, Arvest to be specific, that has more than $10 Billion in assets and so would force them to “recapitalize” by more than $100 Million in order to comply with the new regulations. She is proposing to increase that minimum to $15 Billion so that Arvest wouldn’t have to do that very thing. Of course she’s doing this for the good people of Arkansas who are struggling due to the “limited access to credit”. Here’s how she put it, she “believes the threshold should be high enough to ensure no bank in Arkansas is subject to these new rules on existing capital, which would hinder their ability to generate lending for consumers and businesses at a time when access to credit is already difficult to come by… These banks did not cause the near-collapse of our financial system and should not be punished for Wall Street’s actions.” Yep, good Ol’ Blanche is just trying to make sure that we folk back here in Arkansas aren’t hindered by all these new regulations being proposed in DC. Ain’t she a brick!
Did I happen to mention that Wal-Mart/Walmart is her second largest in-state contributor? Why is that important you might ask? Well, seems that Wal-Mart/Walmart is the majority owner of an Arkansas bank and John Walton (one of Sams’ boys) is the chairman, chief executive and president of this bank. What’s the banks name? I think you already know, it’s Arvest Bank.
As one editorial put it, “One of the strongest arguments for re-electing Senator Lincoln this year is how well she knows the system. One of the strongest arguments against re-electing Senator Lincoln this year is that she knows the system too well.”
