Thread: US TREASURY & CHAMBER OF COMM:Open-Immigration TAG TEAM

US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE and US TREASURY strutting and fretting upon the stage, under the title “US Capital Markets Competitiveness”:

What’s going on here? The elite Captains of Industry actually disagreeing on the need to overhaul the US regulatory environment. So why is this Government-Industry Coalition pushing this overhaul? Remember that Bush stated in a WSJ article that, referring to the need to change SARBOX: ‘we don’t need to change the law, just the way in which we implement the rules’. Is he not proving his point in the immigraiton non-enforcement calamity?...... The WSJ report is accurate, but limited to the polite disagreements. I watched this event on C-Span and can fill in a couple of details. I searched Lexis-Nexis but found only the prepared Introductory Remarks of Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury and former head of Goldman Sachs. No transcript is available; perhaps later from C-Span…

The panel consisted of: NYC Mayor Bloomberg, Treasury Secy Paulson, Greenspan (ex-FED RES), Robert Rubin (Clinton’s Treasury Sec’y), Chris Cox (current SEC), P. Volcker (ex-FED Reserve). The second panel consisted of: Paulson, Cox, Buffett, Immelt (GE), Jamie Dymon (JP Morgan), Charles Schwab, Arthur Levitt (ex-SEC)

Statements by Mayor Michael Bloomberg (NYC) and Alan Greenspan make the underlying motivation clear, in my view at least: I paraphrase Bloomberg’s reference to immigration:

a) The protectionist movement in this country has again reared its ugly head, and the anti-immigration movement which will destroy our children's future if we let it go unchecked. [how?]

b) This is a country that depends on world trade [how does that relate to immigration?]and [we depend]

c) on people coming here... We don't have a birthrate that is big enough to support our economy [not true] and

d) we don't have all the intellectual capital we need, and we just got to find ways, while providing for protection from terrorism, to get the 3 or 400,000 immigrants we need every year. [how about the thousands of underemployed looking for a chance to practice their skill again?]

e) We need to take care of all those who are already here and make the visa process a lot easier and faster. [how about first things first? as in business, first a plan A and plan B, cost-benefit and impact statements... all the stuff that prudent companies practice...]

He made no distinction between skilled and unskilled labor. He apparently does not know that we already allow almost 1 million legal immigrants every year…hmmm? And another 500,000 temporary, non-immigrant visas for various professional and skilled folks, the majority of whom somehow become permanent. He also ignores the 12-20 million that are already here, implying that this number is not big enough; I wonder how far he would like to go? How about 1 Billion of the world's 3 Billion poor?

f) Bloomberg further suggested that we should “open the borders which will facilitate the sharing of the American Dream”….

I wonder: Is this being generous to the Mexicans or to Americans? Should the Mexicans and other nations not have their own “American Dream”? Should we not be exporting our form of “capitalism”, rather than just enhancing the wealth of those who profit from the importation of cheap labor, and therefore perpetuate poverty in Mexico and other places? Could it be that capitalism in Mexico would make that labor too expensive?

It defies logic to infer that the above observations by Bloomberg lead him to conclude that more immigration is the answer ....

Like the Catholic Church, they can only think about bringing those “poor souls” to the Promised Land, never promoting the Americanization of Mexico, but causing the Mexicanization of America, by importing its poverty? Does Bush not frequently state that a prosperous world is good for America? Let’s help Mexico get prosperous without affecting the US middle class pocket book. The corporate pocket-book is doing just fine.

Greenspan (verbatim quote) “Income distribution is capitalism’s most vulnerable point; the system must have the trust of the people…unless the people who participate believe it is just… We can solve the problem with opening immigration to skilled workers. Our skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world, i.e. bring in enough skilled workers so that the supply of our domestically produced skilled workers would be supplemented with a major influx of foreign skilled workers that would essentially lessen the cost of US skilled wage levels and end the concentration of income…”


This statement was in response to the (reluctant) admission that there is a widening gap between rich and poor; but this statement seems to be targeting the gap between middle class skilled and unskilled wage earners, rather than the top Small Business Owners (who are the majority of the “rich”) and corporate heads making “ungodly” amounts of money (according to Warren Buffet), versus ordinary wage earners. As Buffet pointed out in an earlier panel, corporate profits now enjoy over 8% of GDP compared to the traditional 4-6%.... meaning that individuals make less of the “pie”, albeit a growing pie… clearly income levels have gone done for a great many middle/lower class people...

Paulson lamented the fact that US STOCK MARKETS are losing more and more foreign corporate listings due, he claims, to the SarBox requirements. Yet the US is still 38% of the world’s capitalization, of which the NYSE is 30 by itself. Ms. Yerger (the lone woman on this stage, representing the investors of this country) pointed out that the majority of companies prefer, and always have preferred, to list “locally” where they understand their culture and regulations and she sees no real change from those practices. The negative trend of IPOs in the US has been a fact since 1996, only because the First World and the major New Players are experiencing high liquidity and don’t need to come to the US to borrow cash. At this point I expected someone to reveal the fact that just within the last ten days the government released the figures for gains on investments: it appears for the first time in history that foreign investments in the US earned more money than US investments made overseas…another “balance” going the wrong way. May be no one has yet figured out what this means; or perhaps it means that foreigners DO in fact prefer to invest in the US…or returns are better in the US than anywhere else….. or…. this globalization sure can be confusing!

Buffett and Immelt (GE) seemed to be the most direct and forthrightly “American” saying simply: tell us what the rules are and we will compete…But the US Chamber of Commerce and Treasury seem to be hell-bent on their own agenda which might be:

a) manufacture regulatory problems and move to a “principle-based” governance (as opposed to rules-based) … so we don’t have to ask with each decision ‘is this legal, but is it right’? … so who will interpret as to what is “right”?.... Rubin reasonably suggested a “materiality” standard to be added, rather than change Sarbanes Oxley requirements. In focus is rule 404 which forces the CEO to certify, under penalty of a felony, to the accuracy of the financial reports. Ironically Greenspan stated that this is the one provision of Sarbox with which he agrees. Immelt intuitively reduced all of these arguments down to a matter of two extremes: 9 pages of principles, versus 900 pages of accounting rules……..”great taste, less filling… opined Cox, referring to the principles-based concept”…and

b) manufacture labor shortages so that we can reduce the cost of US labor across the board, rather than raising the living standards of the emerging nations…

Anyway…. Food for thought…. Follow the money………….

This all sounds pretty much like where they're trying to take us with the North American Union. All good for the corporations and wealthy elites, and the average American gets you-know-what.

the point of this post is so that we understand better the MONEY reason behind all this maneuvering in Congress; perhaps this way we can figure out how to make it expensive for "them" to proceed or find a counter balance somehow....

it is my opinion that there are probably corporate types who DO NOT agree with open-borders, just like the Wall Street Journal competitor IBD Investors Business Daily....IT DOES NOT agree with the Wall Street types.... http://www.investors.com/editorial/edit ... 6746739105
we must find ways to harness those CORPORATE TYPES somehow for OUR side..... these guys, just like our neighbors have been INTIMIDATED into silence on this issue BECAUSE they are afraid of being called RACIST and be shunned in certain circles...
this "bullying" by the BIG LOBBIES is one serious defect of the American system... we might disagree, but we can still be friends....
why does neighbor shun neighbor on this kind of issue?... because people are afraid of being associated with an issue in which "they" call you RACIST.... sad, but true.

The biggest LOBBY in the world is also the biggest LOBBY on this issue: THE US CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, which is the lobbying agent for virtually every major corporation and industry associations in AMERICA...

may be a campaign of shipping boxes with rocks to Tom Donogue (CEO of the Chamber) would be one great move to get his attention and embarrass his paying members.... He labeled opponents of illegals "as dumb as a box of rocks"...

Originally Posted by Kate

This all sounds pretty much like where they're trying to take us with the North American Union. All good for the corporations and wealthy elites, and the average American gets you-know-what.

Kate, where did you ever find that AVATAR?? portrays him perfectly!!

I say, maybe we should start a boycott across America against small businesses in our home towns who are a members of the Chamber of Commerce.

I use to be a small business owner but if my customers had boycotted
my business I would have droped my membership, of course that was along time ago and chamber of commerce has taken on a whole new role in this country, and not a very attractive on either. It might work!!

modified original post to make Bloomberg's funny logic more readable... no words were changed or deleted nor added to the Mayhem's pronouncements.