“Billionaire activist Carl Icahn, who has been making headlines with his epic battle with Apple Inc., might have another one on his hands – this time with his banker friends,” Jennifer Ablan reports for Reuters.
“In an interview with FOX Business Network on Tuesday, Icahn called for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated investment banks and commercial banks,” Ablan reports. “Icahn, who rarely comments on the nation’s banks, was referring to the Depression-era law, which was repealed in the late 1990s.”
“Of course, Icahn had kind words to say about Apple,” Ablan reports. “Icahn told FOX: ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving. I haven’t sold one share, nor do I intend to. I think Apple is one of the cheapest stocks around and I’ve said that – Tim Cook and I agree on that. It’s very undervalued.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David E.” for the heads up.]
Icahn had a baaaad night.
He saw three ghosts… And now has lost his mind.
OR he’s up to something, even worse.
So you are opposed to the Glass-Steagall Act? Do you even know what it is? Thought not!
Would you care to explain how repealing Glass-Steagall will have an impact on Apple share price?
It would significantly reduce the power of investment banks. They’d have to be more careful about their decisions, since they don’t have all of that collateral to fall back on. It would also improve loan rates, I would imagine. All kinds of good things.
Apple as a safe-haven stock would benefit b/c it is financially healthier than some of the other speculative stocks.
He proposed reinstating it. It was repealed in the late ’90s based on Alan Greenspan’s fantasy that the banks were big boys and could be relied upon to act responsibly. We saw how that worked out. Greenspan was said to have later commented “Oops”. Sorry ideologue, should never have been in charge of his own bank account, let alone everyones.
Thank you both eN & quiviran for explaining it. I didn’t see what Icahn was talking about until you explained it.
I didn’t say I am opposed to it. I am saying Icahn is not himself.
Yes I do not know what the Glass-astragal act is, and I do not mean to infer that I ever did. I do know that the banks and mortgage firms have proven, time and time again, that they can’t be trusted and are poor financial custodians. Not to mention investment brokerages.
Wolf of Wall Street, although just a movie, does spark the kind of greed and amoral financial society we live in. Greed is the bane of our times.
You don’t infer.. you imply.. Readers infer.
Got it.
Blame spell-check, Gollum. Always blame spell-check. … or the Bass Player. 🙂
It was the brown note, from the bass player, which shook and confused me. That’s the ticket.
🙂
And all this on Fox?
The devils mouth piece reporting another devil saying that other devils should be restricted.
Go figure.
The problem with attacking Fox and calling it the “devils mouthpiece” is it is one of the only venues for conservative thought, outside of talk radio and a few internet web pages. All other broadcast TV networks that report news are slanted far left, and are frighteningly in lock step parroting nearly identical lines like lemmings:
So trash on Fox, but then where can you hear anything but unilateral group-think liberal news? Do you even ever read or expose yourself to conservative thought in any news outlet?
Just to keep off topic, but on the Fox topic, check this out –
By DYLAN BYERS | 1/2/14 12:54 PM EST
2013: Fox News tops ratings race, CNN slides to 20-year low in prime time
Even with waning viewership, Fox News topped the cable news ratings race for the 12th consecutive year in 2013, with more total viewers than MSNBC and CNN combined. Meanwhile, MSNBC slid to third place in total-day viewership while CNN hit a 20-year low in prime time.
Fox News averaged 1.1 million viewers in prime time and 1.76 million viewers total per day — a 5-percent and 14-percent decline, respectively, on 2012, which was a presidential election year. The network averaged 222,000 viewers in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demo in prime time and 294,000 total per day — a 19-percent drop and 30-percent drop, respectively.
MSNBC held second place in prime time averaging 640,000 total viewers and 203,000 aged 25 to 54, but fell to third place in total day with just 394,000 total and 131,000 in the demo, losing to CNN for the first time in two years. MSNBC suffered notably on account of 2013 being a nonelection year.
CNN edged out MSNBC in total day with 413,000 total viewers and 131,000 in the demo. But the network slid to a 20-year-low in ratings for prime time, where President Jeff Zucker has yet to make any substantive changes to the network’s programming. On average, just 568,000 viewers watched CNN’s prime-time lineup. A mere 183,000 of those were in the key demo.
The takeaways are conventional wisdom at this point: Fox News, which has the oldest viewership. needs to figure out how to attract younger audiences. Roger Ailes’ decision to move Megyn Kelly to prime time was a step in that direction, but far more needs to be done. MSNBC needs to figure out how to come up with compelling programming outside of the election cycle. Right now they’re using liberal outrage as a crutch, often with dangerous results. CNN… well, Zucker needs to radically shake up prime time. One year after taking the helm, he’s only hinted at forthcoming changes. Those need to happen sooner rather than later.
—
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/01/fox-news-tops-ratings-race-cnn-slides-in-primetime-180451.html
—
I’m always surprised by the low number of viewers for all these news programs.
Repeal of Glass-Steagall was a big contributing factor to the real estate crash. Somewhere between the strict requirements of Glass-Steagall and the wild, wild west of deregulation there is a workable compromise between oversight/regulation and free-market capitalism.
It was Clinton’s “mistake”, for which he earned hundreds of millions of dollars for speeches from the banks.
The truth is that it was the Republican led House and Senate that forced the issue. He didn’t have much wiggle room.
Clinton himself and his advices — later, Obama’s staff — were for this. Of course, Republicans were for this even more so: they receive from the banks even more. All of them are totally bought.
http://wolf-pac.com tries to solve the issue through constitutional amendment.
“Carl Icahn calls for return of Glass-Steagall”
Never thought I’d agree with Icahn on anything.
I agree. It’s starting to make me reevaluate my opinion of him.
Please stop giving this guy so much attention. Just ignore him.
By the time it was finally killed the provisions of Glass-Steagall were effectively neutered by administrative actions from about 1955 through 1999 when the provisions were finally killed.
Bringing back Glass-Steagall in its form as of 1999 would have very little effect on the financial industry and Icahn knows this. Thus he’s making noises yet again about doing something that makes him *sound* good but really helps no one. Even his friends in the banking industry are not concerned about his noises concerning bringing back Glass-Steagall. Why? because they know that if it is brought back as it was, it will not hurt them, and they know that Icahn is just making noises to get his name in the news again.
If Glass-Steagall were brought back with most of the loopholes closed, then it *might* help correct what is wrong with the financial industry. However, with the power that the financial industry currently has (and will have for the foreseeable future) the chance of a corrected/updated Glass-Steagall being enacted is somewhere between on divided by infinity and zero.
In our current lazy/entitled/self-corrupting culture, the ride downhill is what we’re going to get. For my its as simple as pointing at the US Fourth Amendment, then pointing at President Obama. Total disconnect. Total treason as just another day’s work.
But we can dream, we can work, we can pray, we can be active in putting on the brakes and reinstating sanity. I’ve never been one for riding little red wagons into brick walls. I have better things to do than play passive.
Correction: “For ME it’s as simple as…”
Dinner time, missed my tea time!
What does Glass-Steagall have to do with the U.S. Fourth Amendment? I don’t see any connection at all.
Besides, Obama is just living with the laws enacted as part of the Patriot Act and associated laws — and court actions and regulations based upon those laws. He didn’t institute (nor preside over the creation of) actions based based upon those laws.
While I radically agree that Obama should be much, much more proactive in curtailing authorizations under these laws, I doubt he will. He knows he does not have
I think we’ve been at this incoherence wall before.
I’m well known for using bizarro syntax by default. But I certainly didn’t ‘intend’ to connect Glass-Steagall and the Fourth Amendment. I, in turn, cannot comprehend you connected the two. Perhaps another reading of what I actually wrote is in order. But if that does not solve your incoherence, maybe this will help:
The so-called ‘Patriot Act’ contains NOTHING that breaks the US Fourth Amendment. In fact, it specifically lays out the rules of the FISC (FISA courts) such that the Fourth Amendment is NEVER broken. If you believe otherwise, you’ve been lied to or again didn’t understand what you had read.
Once again I point the world to the TWO published complaints by the FISC complaining that the NSA had NOT followed the Patriot Act, had NOT followed the Fourth Amendment and were in fact LYING to Congress AND to the FISC.
It’s all there to read! Go read! Don’t count on hearsay! Read read read. THEN go form an opinion and express that opinion. Argue with FACTS.
Arguing is bullshit is just more bullshit. Bullshit is a magnet for FLIES. That’s all your opinions/arguments are going to gather if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You fail to know what you’re taking about QUITE a lot Shadowself. I know full well you’re no idiot. Now put it into practice.
The NSA specifically stated that it was a rule put in by the Reagan administration that they are using as support for their phone tapping, and collection of data.
Do you have a reference I can read? I’m really tired of hearsay on this subject. I love facts. Thanks.
Meanwhile, here is an article to get folks going regarding NSA deceit toward the FISA courts, clearly breaking the Patriot Act, not to mention the US Fourth Amendment:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/19/fisa-court-documents-nsa-violations-privacy
I have to agree Carl.
– There’s deregulation.
– Then there’s letting lunatic drug addicts out of the asylum to reek hell on the public at large. It’s not far from comparing the banks in 2007 (not just 2008 Carl) to cenobites from Clive Barker’s ‘Hellraiser’ stories. They destroy themselves as they destroy their victims, everybody die. That’s not sane. That’s worth regulating.
‘wreak’ surely, not ‘reek’.
hell might stink.
According to the unusually unselfish and intelligent Sen. Elizabeth Warren, during the time when the Glass-Steagall Act was the law of the land — from approx. 1932 to approx. 1994, there were no boom and busts; Economic performance evened out. Before G-S, from the founding of the US, it had booms and busts. Now with the elimination of G-S, economists and analysts talk as if boom and busts are acts of God, a natural cycles and nothing can be done about them.
It appears they are wrong: G-S generally eliminates them because it separates banking, a staid profession, from investing, a high stakes game of precipitous losses and towering wins. A significant property of G-S is that it prevents investment banks from gambling with your own money.
If banks have so much confidence to gamble on the stock market, they need to prove it by gambling with their own money, not the taxpayers’. That they don’t, means they have have no confidence, likely meaning that they think of themselves as incompetent but just telling us the opposite.
Oh, and by the way, Democrat Clinton and his Neo Liberal henchman, Larry Summers, got rid of G-S. It was one of the worst economic decisions in the last four decades, this, along with NAFTA. Both released sharks that devoured the Middle Class.
If Icahn can put as much energy into re instituting G-S as he has put into attempts to skew and devour Dell and Apple, I would have a higher regard for his world view.
In the end, however, Icahn and his ilk are bad for America, generally speaking.