"Words that make actions speak louder."
The country needs meaningful financial reform a lot more than it needs more political analysis. Yesterday, however, the two became even more intertwined than usual. By compromising on good policy on Thursday, it looks like Democrats have outsmarted themselves politically too. Now the only fix left for them is to push for the best possible […]
Harry Reid got it right when he said that the GOP is “making love to Wall Street” – and when politicians and bankers “make love” it’s the public that gets screwed. Sen. Shelby’s so-called “consumer protection amendment” failed, as expected.(!) But what happens next? Progressives have captured the public mood and are changing the dynamic […]
Now that the ideological defense of Wall Street behavior has collapsed, brought down by the wreckage of deregulation, bankers and lobbyists are pursuing a new strategy: fighting the democratic process itself. They’re suggesting that this issue is a little too complicated for public scrutiny, and that what’s really needed is for wiser heads to sort […]
An anonymous email’s been making the rounds on Wall Street from some loser who thinks he’s a shark. It’s a nasty piece of work that reveals the mentality of the people that have been running our economy for some time, thanks to deregulation and political influence peddling. We caught a glimpse of that mentality in […]
We thought we’d write a little radio ad for the SAFE Banking proposal being put forward in the House and Senate. But this ad’s not just promoting a policy – it’s selling a litmus test. This amendment finally gives us a chance to find out whether those politicians who are giving great speeches about “too […]
What we’ve been witnessing in Washington isn’t just political positioning by one party looking to deny the other a victory, although it’s certainly that. We’re also seeing the death struggle of a dying ideology. This ideology provided intellectual cover to business and political elites for decades, but events have proved conclusively that it doesn’t work. […]
This may be the single biggest lie in modern American history: “Most Republicans want a bill,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, “but they want a substantive bill.” We’ve criticized the Democrats plenty of times on the issue of financial reform, and the Dodd bill isn’t perfect. But this wasn’t a yea-or-nay vote about a bill. It […]
The Senate Budget Committee nearly voted to break up Wall Street’s biggest banks. But four Democrats helped pro-Wall Street Republicans kill an amendment from Bernie Sanders that would “require the divestment of any financial institution the failure of which would pose a systemic risk to the economy.” Republican Senator Jim Bunning, on the other hand, […]
If you’ve ever wondered what the phrase “the sound of silence” means, you should’ve been listening when the President invited “the titans of industry” to join him in promoting financial reform this morning. The President’s speech walked a fine line between vision and reality. At times it seemed almost an internal dialog between the technocrat […]
Tomorrow President Obama will return to Cooper Union in New York, where he gave a speech on financial reform as a candidate two years ago. We’re told that his advisors want him to “go big” in his speech, as he did when he addressed a joint session of Congress on health reform. But if he […]