"Words that make actions speak louder."
Do today’s economic conservatives actually want to live in a functional society, or are they striving for an economy that runs on Monopoly Money? NPR’s Planet Money recently did a fun segment on the classic board game and its relationship to actual economics, featuring commentary from a couple of actual economists. Russell Roberts, an economist […]
Finally, some good news on Wall Street accountability. A federal judge is holding up the SEC’s effort to let Citigroup’s top executives off the hook for misleading their own shareholders about $40 billion in subprime debt. If Citi executives did what the SEC says they did, then the company’s top managers are guilty of both […]
A landmark court ruling on Wells Fargo’s outrageous overdraft scam has the potential to return hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen funds to consumers all over the country. But like many of the banking scandals from the past decade, there’s more to the story than simple bank predation. When banks devised this new program […]
Robert Rubin and Joseph Stiglitz are going public on jobs and the deficit, in what looks very much like a re-run of a major policy debate during the Clinton era. The dispute is simple—should the government focus on putting people back to work, or should it try to cut the deficit? Stiglitz wants to see […]
Of all the accomplishments Elizabeth Warren has amassed during her lifetime, one of the most impressive is also one of the least well-known to the general public. Warren was a co-founder of Credit Slips, a very technical, influential blog on banking and bankruptcy. She hasn’t blogged there since taking up her post as Chair of […]
Financial giants have figured out yet another way to profit from fraud. After devastating communities across the country with shady subprime loans, the mortgage industry has launched a new assault on America’s neighborhoods. Big banks are now outsourcing their foreclosure processing to shady law firms with a history of breaking the law for a quick […]
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is the Republican Party’s latest effort at putting forward a credible economic ideologist. His recent interview with Ezra Klein reveals this effort as a complete failure. Ryan’s views about the financial sector completely contradict his statements about the federal budget deficit, making his policy prescriptions as an incoherent mess of meaningless […]
What is the penalty for bankers who tell $40 billion lies? Somewhere between nothing and a rounding-error on your bonus. The SEC just hit two Citigroup executives with fines for concealing $40 billion in subprime mortgage debt from investors back in 2007. The biggest fine is going to Citi CFO Gary Crittenden, who will pay […]
No reformers question whether Elizabeth Warren is the best candidate to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She’s a lauded scholar, an inspiring advocate who will draw talented and dedicated reformers to the new agency and she came up with the whole idea for creating the CFPB in the first place. Nominating a dedicated […]
Ezra Klein needs to stop repeating bank lobby smears against Elizabeth Warren. He’s sympathetic to the charge that Warren is “too dismissive of the benefits of financial innovation,” because, well, I don’t know why. It’s a baseless allegation being made by Warren’s opponents without any evidence whatsoever. It relies on the stock bank lobby response […]