The Pursuit of...

My friend Gary Gross and I spoke about this earlier today.

On April 2, 2009, the work of July 4, 1776 was nullified at the meeting of the G-20 in London. The joint communiqué essentially announces a global economic union with uniform regulations and bylaws for all nations, including the United States. Henceforth, our SEC, Commodities Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Board and other regulators will have to march to the beat of drums pounded by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a body of central bankers from each of the G-20 states and the European Union.

The mandate conferred on the FSB is remarkable for its scope and open-endedness. It is to set a “framework of internationally agreed high standards that a global financial system requires.” These standards are to include the extension of “regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments, and markets…[including] systemically important hedge funds.”

Note the key word: “all.” If the FSB, in its international wisdom, considers an institution or company “systemically important”, it may regulate and over see it. This provision extends and internationalizes the proposals of the Obama Administration to regulate all firms, in whatever sector of the economy that it deems to be “too big to fail.”

Now this is not some right wing ideologue saying this...this is a high ranking Clintonista saying this. Here is the agreement that Mr. Morris is talking about. The pertinent paragraph is below.

To this end we are implementing the Action Plan agreed at our last meeting, as set out in the attached progress report. We have today also issued a Declaration, Strengthening the Financial System. In particular we agree:

· to establish a new Financial Stability Board (FSB) with a strengthened mandate, as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), including all G20 countries, FSF members, Spain, and the European Commission;

· that the FSB should collaborate with the IMF to provide early warning of macroeconomic and financial risks and the actions needed to address them;

· to reshape our regulatory systems so that our authorities are able to identify and take account of macro-prudential risks;

· to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets. This will include, for the first time, systemically important hedge funds;

· to endorse and implement the FSF's tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms;

· to take action, once recovery is assured, to improve the quality, quantity, and international consistency of capital in the banking system. In future, regulation must prevent excessive leverage and require buffers of resources to be built up in good times;

· to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens. We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information;

· to call on the accounting standard setters to work urgently with supervisors and regulators to improve standards on valuation and provisioning and achieve a single set of high-quality global accounting standards; and

· to extend regulatory oversight and registration to Credit Rating Agencies to ensure they meet the international code of good practice, particularly to prevent unacceptable conflicts of interest.

Emphasis mine....

Heads up to the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas - the G20 is coming after YOUR SOVEREIGNITY!

I wonder how many of you out there saw the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness" staring Will and Jaden Smith. It was the biographical story of a gentleman by the name of Chris Gardner. Mr. Gardner was just out of jail, left to care for his young son alone, with no home and he was determined to change his life around. He was determined to become a stock broker in order to get out of sleeping in subway bathrooms. He passed his licensing exam and went to work for Bear Stearns & Co. His fire and determination allowed him to rise quickly in the ranks and he eventually left Bear Stearns to form his own company.

Under the "agreement" just signed by President Obama, minorities like Mr. Gardner would not be able to do what he did because according to the agreement, there will be PAY CAPS on anyone working in the financial sector!

Is this the kind of hope and change that you wanted? Keeping people sleeping in subway bathrooms because the government has mandated everyone earn only a trainees wage? Because that is exactly what you got!