"Words that make actions speak louder."
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner delivered a populist stemwinder of a speech the other day, bringing his rhetorical A-game with comments like these: “Listen less to those whose judgments brought us this crisis. Listen less to those who told us all they were the masters of noble financial innovation and sophisticated risk management … Instead, listen […]
Sen. Jim DeMint famously predicted that health reform would be Obama’s “Waterloo(1),” saying: “If we’re able to stop Obama on this … it will break him.” It looks like Jim DeMint’s crowd might be using the same obstructionist strategy toward financial reform. Here’s a word of advice for the opposition party: If you blockade financial […]
Recently we wrote that Sen. Chris Dodd’s draft financial reform bill would create a “cumbersome bureaucracy.” That wasn’t an endorsement of a conservative talking point: The operative word was “cumbersome.” The Right likes to use the word “bureaucracy” as an epithet, but the primary definition of bureaucracy is “a body of nonelective government officials.” So […]
Rep. Alan Grayson has written a letter calling for the release of all documents and materials contained on AIG’s internal servers. His idea deserves support. US taxpayers rescued AIG and own a majority (79.9%) of its shares. Serious questions remain about the payment of money AIG allegedly owed “counterparties” like Goldman Sachs: Why did the […]
The CBO now says health reform will cut the Federal deficit by $138 billion That’s a win for the bill’s backers, and should make it tougher for self-described ‘fiscal conservatives’ in the Democratic Party to vote against this bill. (No, let’s re-frame that as a positive statement: It will make it easier for Conservadems to […]
When President Obama asked a group of senior executives for suggestions on streamlining government, it’s unlikely that any of them suggested layers of new bureaucracy, vague marching orders, or management by committee. Yet Sen. Dodd’s ‘compromise’ financial reform proposal does all these things. The likely result? Banks and other financial institutions will be tightly-run aggressive […]
Eighteen former members of the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Advisory Council (CAC) strongly endorsed the idea of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency in a letter released last week . Draft legislation released yesterday by Sen. Chris Dodd would instead place the CFPA in the Fed, an idea that the former CAC members specifically rejected. The […]
Democracy requires vigorous public debate in an open forum, conducted by leaders willing to take a public stand and face the consequences. Today’s proposal on banking reform from Sen. Dodd is the product of backroom negotiation and holds nobody accountable. It allows Senators to dodge one of the most critical issues of the day: the […]
There’s a lot of buzz in health care circles about an editorial in today’s Washington Post entitled “If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly.” That could be dangerous: the author’s conclusions are contradicted, not supported, by the available facts.
After more than a year of closed-door negotiations, the President and other Democrats have finally appropriated a Republican phrase by calling for “an up or down vote” on the resulting health reform legislation. Great idea – so great, in fact, that we should do even better on financial reform. This time, let’s have an up-or-down […]