Don’t mind the link source. This IS a story about the US, and how banks want to get into the real estate brokerage business, that was originally published at MarketWatch (registration required):

Monday, February 20, 2006
AFX News Limited

WASHINGTON (AFX) — In 1999, big U.S. banks won a victory with the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed them to offer investments, insurance and other products and services for the first time. Seven years later, banks have their sights set on offering one more service: real estate brokerage.

But, in an escalating fight, real-estate brokers are pushing back against banks and urging regulators to throw out a proposed rule that would let banks compete for buying and selling properties.

Real-estate brokers are increasingly edgy about what they perceive as banks’ growing powers. And the banks’ push to offer brokerage services comes at a prickly time for the realty industry. Online and discount brokers are giving traditional, full-service agents a run for their role as middle-men between property buyers and sellers.

Banks argue that existing law supports their entry into the real estate brokerage and property businesses — which could represent new and potentially lucrative areas to compete in. Trade groups like the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents banks, say solidifying legal authority for brokerage rights is a legislative priority for 2006.

Banks claim that consumers will enjoy better convenience and lower prices if they’re allowed to use banks as real-estate brokers. Real-estate brokers say they welcome competition in the brokerage business but argue banks’ federal backing gives them an unfair advantage. They also claim consumers won’t save any money using a bank as a broker.

But as the feud continues, some analysts say it could only be a matter of time before banks get into the brokerage business.

“Over time, brokerage is going to be in trouble” from the challenge by banks, says Peter Wallison, who studies financial issues at the American Enterprise Institute.

….. Real-estate brokers have been on the defensive against banks since 2001, when the Treasury and Federal Reserve published a proposal — still unapproved — giving banks the green light to operate as brokers.

….. Banks believe the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allows them to enter the real-estate brokerage industry. Based on that law, the Treasury and Federal Reserve published a proposal in 2001 giving banks the green light to operate as brokers. But Congress hasn’t OK’d the proposal yet.

….. Banking advocates say consumers will win if national banks are permitted to act as brokers.

“We believe consumers benefit from more competition in this area,” said Floyd Stoner, congressional relations director for the American Bankers Association.

….. Analysts like Wallison believe banks will eventually be able to persuade Congress that real estate is a financial service. But he acknowledges banks have an uphill fight. “The Realtors are very powerful in Congress,” he said. “More powerful than the banks are.”

Where bankers see more competition — and more business for themselves — Realtors cry foul. They argue the law permits banks to engage in financial activities — and that real estate isn’t one of them.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley addressed insurance and securities, says NAR spokesman Steve Cook. “It did not address real estate.”

….. the fight over brokerage rights is expected to drag on. Realtors are seeking a meeting with Treasury Secretary Snow, but nothing’s been scheduled yet, according to a Treasury spokeswoman.

But it’s questionable whether Snow could change the comptroller’s decisions: the office is under Treasury but is independent.

I’d be more sympathetic to the realtors if they themselves didn’t operate like a closed cartel. But they do (link is to an August BizzyBlog post, “The Realtor Racket”). So I say, let the sunshine of competition in. Quickly.

Officer Candidate and S.O.B. Alliance member Phil Van Treuren has set up a new blog for good military news.

It’s called MilTracker. If the first day’s listings and presentation are any indication, it’s an exponential leap from his old site Camp Katrina, which was already really good.

Go for it, sir.

Though it won’t be further updated, Camp Katrina will stay right where it is.

S.O.B. Alliance, adjust your blogrolls accordingly. No need to salute–I’m a civilian.

Sixteen days out, it’s easy to see how what is described at Noel Sheppard’s NewsBusters post yesterday as the first story February 11 on the Dubai Deal got people so excited, and to suspect that it was written to do just that.

A few curiosities about the piece:

• Done on a Saturday (unusual for a piece of this nature), perhaps calculated to ensure maximum attention and minimal ability to follow-up.
• The opening sentence (”A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six American ports as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism.”) is very clever, saying a lot while saying nothing. “Significant operations” is a pretty vague term. “Loading and unloand at terminals,” which is how it’s described at this National Review Media Blog post, is quite a bit different.
• Sticking with just the first sentence, “A country with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers” is also nicely vague, designed to get the reader to think that the government funds terrorism, when it appears that the only “ties” to the country were same “ties” that most of us have to the USA: We live here.

There are many other examples of curious wording throughout the article that appear to make the deal seem bigger and more threatening than it is turning out to be.

Even Mr. Sheppard doesn’t blame the entire firestorm on one item, noting that Mainstream Media digging into the details has been week from the get-go, but it appears fair to say that the wording and timing of Ted Bidris’s AP piece weren’t designed to fully inform readers. Sheppard’s post also points out that Salon’s Walter Shapiro made the same point on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” yesterday.

If there’s a lesson in this, it would be “Dig first. Shout later.”
_________________________________

UPDATE: Rush just after the 1PM ET hour said that the first article about the DPW deal was back in late October in The Wall Street Journal in a routinely written, just-the-facts piece about what was then a planned deal. He then found a Feb. 15, 2006 article that he said was the earliest one that led to the controversy, but he’s incorrect about that, given the above. Nevertheless, the big points are that the planned deal wasn’t a secret, the opposition has been ginned up, and that a lot of us (initially) fell for it.
_________________________________

Previous Posts:

• Feb. 26 — The Dubai Deal: Isn’t This Special?
• Feb. 26 — The Dubai Deal: Confessions of a Knee-Jerk Reactor, with Plenty of “Good” Excuses
• Feb. 19 — That Arab Seaport Takeover Thingie

Free Links:

• Uh, you guys in Iran, there is NOT a correlation — This goes back to late October, but considering the world situation, it is still worth noting (HT Atlas Shrugs): “Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the latest cabinet meeting in the Iranian capital that ‘if we were permitted to hang two or three persons, the problems with the stock exchange would be solved for ever,’ according to a Tehran-based newspaper.”
• While on the subject, it looks like terrorists have their own useful idiots in Europe.
• A late hat tip to an e-mail from S.O.B. Alliance member Porkopolis for this item, which I have sat on because I had hoped to do more with it. But this will suffice — British retail giant Tesco PLC is coming to the US to duke it out with Wal-Mart, Costco, et al. Tesco’s competitive advantage is supposed to be its superior customer intelligence, and its supposedly unique ability to “make the most of its statistical information. ….. Tesco can closely watch what its shoppers are purchasing. It then explores linkages between the products people presently buy and the ones they might be persuaded to buy next.” Let the games begin.
• Comedian Don Knotts died Friday. He was best known as Sheriff Andy Griffith’s deputy on “The Andy Griffith Show.” People like Knotts were strictly in it for laughs and had no other agenda. Today (supposedly), if you’re not edgy, you can’t be funny. Baloney — If you have to be edgy to be funny, you’re either not as talented as Don Knotts was, or you’re taking the easy way out.
• A sure sign that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is running out of worthy nominees — The Sex Pistols will be inducted this year. Always playing the pretentious rebels, they of course won’t be there, and informed the R&R HOF of their no-show plans in an incoherent screed (warning: foul language). The band was a hyped-up creation of a music industry media desperate to find something “new” in the late 1970s. It never achieved anything meaningful musically or financially, period.

Requires Subscription:

• The Wall Street Journal editorialized on Thursday about the decision of Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, who had twice vetoed school-choice legislation (”Wisconsin’s Governor to Inner-City Kids: You’re Stuck“), to sign it the third time around:
  

  Ultimately, a sustained grass-roots campaign led by choice proponents — along with flagging poll numbers among Mr. Doyle’s pro-voucher black base in an election year — forced the Governor’s hand. A particularly effective television spot by the Alliance for Choices in Education featured a black father telling the camera, “If school choice is good enough for the Governor’s family, I ought to be able to have it, too.” Governor Doyle’s son attended a private school. Sometimes it helps to point out the hypocrisy of public officials who exercise the very freedoms they deny others.

  Voucher advocates, who want the enrollment cap removed altogether, didn’t get everything they wanted, but they did get the better of the Governor. And with some extra breathing room, they’re hoping focus can return to student achievement, where it should be.

  Why did Doyle have to make it so difficult?

Free Link, Save for Lunch:

• Rolling Stone’s “Inside Scientology” expose by Janet Reitman seems especially pertinent in light of this (cough, cough) news (HT Tattle-Tale).

No one can explain it, but Gabrielle Bayless who seemed destined for permanent blindness, can now see perfectly out of one eye. Go to the story link for a video that you must see:

(more…)