“Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer and Robert Reich, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, discuss the latest fiscal cliff negotiations in Washington. Robert Reich believes Democrats have the power in the budget battle, because the Bush tax cuts for the rich — which Republicans want to extend and Democrats oppose — will expire no matter what anyone agrees on come January.

“The question is, will the Democrats actually hold firm?” Reich asks. Reich also addresses whether limiting tax deductions instad of raising marginal tax rates on the rich could generate the $1.6 trillion in new tax revenues that Obama has set as a goal: “Just by limiting deductions for the wealthy you can’t get anywhere near the $1.6 trillion. … Now if you made the tax on capital gains equal to the tax on ordinary income, maybe that preference would get you closer. But nobody is talking about doing that, unfortunately.”

Reich said that Republicans would be the losers if Congress failed to negotiate a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

“I think we are moving in the right direction and we are moving in the right direction because the Democrats are holding most of the trump cards,” he said. “If nothing is done, remember, we go back to the Clinton tax rates of the 1990s, which were not all that bad, in fact the economy did quite well under those tax rates. If nothing is done, basically the Republicans lose.”

“And, if the Republicans try to make a case that they are not going to vote for an extension of middle class tax cuts unless the rich also get a tax cut that puts the Republicans in the position of showing America that they are going to hold the middle hostage and they sure are shills for the very rich -- something that a lot of people suspect anyway, but that kind of demonstration is not going to be good for the GOP,” Reich added.

Across-the-board spending cuts are set to go into effect at the beginning of 2013 if Congress fails to pass a budget that reduces the federal deficit. The Bush tax cuts are also set to expire.

Democrats have said they won’t accept any fiscal cliff deal that doesn’t let the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire, however they want to leave tax rates for middle and lower-income Americans unchanged.

Republicans have said they will oppose any increase in tax rates, but are open to reducing tax write-offs to increase revenue.

“Just by limiting deductions for the wealthy you can’t get anywhere near the $1.6 trillion,” Reich noted.

Robert Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President-Elect Obama's transition advisory board. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet; and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. His commentaries can be heard weekly on public radio's "Marketplace." In 2003, Reich was awarded the prestigious Vaclav Havel Vision Foundation Prize, by the former Czech president, for his pioneering work in economic and social thought. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the ten most successful cabinet secretaries of the century. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, his M.A. from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his J.D. from Yale Law School.

Video courtesy of Current TV.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi talked with Eliot Spitzer last night about Eric Holder's decision not to prosecute Goldman Sachs for the offenses laid out in the Levin report.

Taibbi had this to say afterwards:

"But that's exactly who Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer haven't been, exactly who Bob Khuzami at the SEC hasn't been. Instead of being fighters, they've been dealmakers and plea-bargainers. They've dealt out every major financial scandal, from Abacus to the Muni-bid-rigging cases (they prosecuted a few low-level guys at GE but let the big players at the big banks skate) to the Citigroup fraud settlement that was so bad a judge threw it back at the govenment's face. In that latter case, amazingly, the govenment is now fighting not for its constituents, but for its right to give out crappy deals to repeat-offender banks without judicial review."

"The mob learned from Wall Street," comments Eliot Spitzer on the "cartel-style corruption" behind the Libor scam.

On Current TV's "Viewpoint" recently, host Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone contributing editor, and Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, analyze the Libor interest rate--rigging scandal engulfing the banking industry.

Barclays CEO Bob Diamond recently resigned after the bank was fined $453 million for its part in the scandal, which involved manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), a key global benchmark for interest rates, by essentially "faking their credit scores," according to Taibbi. And as Taibbi explains, Barclays couldn't have acted alone.
...

Kelleher argues that the Libor scandal is proof that the financial industry "is corrupt and rotten to its core." "The same executives [using] the same business model that crashed the entire financial system in '08 are still running these banks," he says.
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"It can't just be Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland. In fact, it can't even be four banks or even five banks," Taibbi says. "Really, in the end it's probably going to come out that it's going to be all of them ... involved in this. And that's what's critical for people to understand: that this is a cartel-style corruption."

For much more on this, start with Matt Taibbi here.

Last night on Current TV's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Keith discussed the latest smear campaign aimed at Occupy Wall Street demonstrations by Fox News with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Spitzer has some excellent ideas on where the movement can go next. Of the crackdown on Occupy Wall Street, he said that it "shouldn't be happening in New York," and that Governor Cuomo should be called "Governor 1 percent."

Sound as if former Gov. Spitzer might have made a fine activist.

Partial transcript follows:

SPITZER: "This is almost exclusively a peaceful, well-thought-out protest by people who care: that's why the public is with them."

OLBERMANN: "And you have written now, many people had made points similar to this, but I think you made it more strongly than others and I want to know why in particular, that they have, that there is already a victory to declare..."

SPITZER: "Oh, absolutely."

OLBERMANN: "...changing the dialogue. How do you sustain that when temperatures are not sustainable. It's a symbol that makes it sustainable, but the symbol involves people staying there."

SPITZER: "Well, well, look, first of all, the frustration at these so-called pundits, and thoughtful people, on major editorial pages saying all they're doing is showing up. Wait a minute, they, being the Occupy Wall Street folks, have done more to change what we're talking about, then all the politicians in Washington who pretend to be progressives or liberal - all of them put together, maybe except Elizabeth Warren.

They've done nothing that comes close to what this group of students and thoughtful young kids has done. So, that's why my hat goes off to them.

Now, what next? It is hard. It's going to be cold. So here are a couple of simple things. One: Every college kid in America goes home over Thanksgiving. Announce the day before Thanksgiving, when kids are getting home, huge rallies. Show the support on college campuses, which, from my sort-of experiential information, is huge. Get big-name musicians. Think back to the '60s, hate to say, you and I can do that, Pete Seeger, get Bruce out there. Get them to say in every spot the day before Thanksgiving, huge rallies to make our, sort of, opening statement as we go into the next chapter.

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