How About Some Racial and Gender Quotas With That ATM Cash?
Turns out that the “Financial Reform” bill includes Racial and Gender Quotas.
Somehow I’m not surprised.
We’ve got old school Chicago Politics with back room deals and voters need not apply for a place at the table. Welcome to corruption and a complete lack of a moral compass. If it’s a “Life Extension Medical Bill” expect it to include Euthanasia and a Bridge To Nowhere to get passed, along with a choice job for someone’s kid…
From several locations, but I’ll quote this one:
our members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently penned a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and several other leading senators, objecting to the new fair-employment regime in the Dodd-Frank legislation now headed to the president’s desk.
“The likelihood that it will in fact promote discrimination is overwhelming,” the letter states.
Section 342 of the bill calls for an “Office of Minority and Women Inclusion” to be established in each of 29 federal bureaus and offices.
The regulations appear to go beyond ensuring that discrimination in hiring decisions does not occur. Instead, they require assurance of “fair inclusion.” Furchtgott-Roth says it will pressure companies to find and hire minorities even if one hasn’t applied for a specific job.
The bill’s affirmative action provisions — some suggest they are de facto quotas — would apply not only to the 29 federal agencies but also to all “financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants, and providers of legal services” who do business with them.
FWIW, one of the better traders on CNBW was just saying he’s put on a short position in regional banks… Nobody with a brain will be buying companies who are dead center of a government witch hunt…
The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Further down, the same article says:
Moreover, the law also applies to those firms’ sub-contractors “as applicable.”
Furchtgott-Roth says that means financial firms seeking to do business with the government will have to verify the racial and gender composition of their subcontractors — including office-cleaning crews, paper-shredding vendors, office-party catering firms — if they want to do business with the government.
Each Office of Minority of Women Inclusion will have an executive-level director, and support personnel, who will set standards to increase “participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the programs and contract of the agency.”
So say you do the car maintenance on the corporate fleet for a bank. Better have over half your staff being women grease monkeys or you are screwed.
(Yes, women are the only majority in America, so they get special rights… Men are a minority of the population. White Men especially. But hey, it’s ok to discriminate against them, they must deserve it. /sarcoff>)
It is just amazing to me how much crap is being ladled into these multi-thousand page lozenges of stupidity. At this point, there is no way I’d even THINK of providing services to a financial company and taking on the risk of a government hand grenade in the mail.
I’ve done the “quota thing”, and it’s a complete waste of time and money. We had some version of it in California and had to have everyone go to mandatory ‘diversity training’ and did quarterly race and gender quota reports. No, they were not called quota reports… at least not in formal meetings, just in the hallways…
I had to explain to my staff (one black woman, one Hispanic woman, one blond woman, one Japanese American male, one religious minority white male, myself, and a guy who’s ethnicity I never quite figured out. Oh, and my bosses ‘gay guy’ secretary… ) why we were not ‘diverse enough’ already to avoid wasting our time with that crap. But because the company was a computer programming / hardware company for the most part, and LOADS of guys like hardware engineering while women tend not, we got run through the ringer. We’d simply set out to build the best team possible and had ended up with a wide ranging mix in my area. The hardware guys were not so lucky and got beat up for it. We got drug along for the ‘ride’…
I wonder what we’ll discover on the rest of the pages as folks finally read what was passed…
This even makes sausage look good in comparison.
Musings from the Chiefio 
I exited from a small position in a local regional bank holding company on Monday. I bought the stock last year because I was familiar with the company and some of the owners (No I don’t travel in high circles. Montana’s just a small state, socially). It is a soundly run company that was undervalued when I bought it and one that hadn’t taken any of the TARP money. The HR director is a friend of my daughter’s and earlier this summer was telling her (my daughter) what a mess the new “financial bill” was making of their risk evaluations and how complex it was to deal with. Therefore, balance sheet and sound practices aside, I bailed. I made 22% and count myself fortunate.
As the long tentacles of the government seem to be everywhere in business today, I plan to take a few years off in my modest investment efforts and see what may transpire. If they’re in, I know there’s no room for me.
Hopefully everyone will simply stop doing business with the gubmint!!
he fantasizes aloud. 8>)
@Dennis: The world is a big place with plenty of more intelligently run countries where folks can invest…
@kuhnKat: Well, I know many folks will stop. It will be left to the large (super large?) companies with a dozen lawyers in the “Compliance Department”.