"Words that make actions speak louder."
When the nation’s most prestigious investment banks found themselves on the verge of total annihilation in the fall of 2008, the most radical and effective government response was not the infamous $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The wildest salvation scheme for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the securities system at large was a plan […]
Heavy-hitting Wall Street political donors are withholding their money from the Democratic Party’s campaign coffers, according to a Washington Post report making the rounds on Capitol Hill today. In a political environment in which almost no group is as publicly reviled as a Wall Street executive, Democrats just scored a tremendous public relations coup. Good […]
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., is defending his decision to vote against the Wall Street reform bill on the grounds that it is simply too weak to prevent future crises, and Tim Fernholz is crying foul. On policy substance, Feingold is undoubtedly correct. From Feingold: At the start of this process I made clear that I […]
Members of Congress finished ironing out their differences on Wall Street reform last night, and the resulting bill deserves unequivocal support from progressives and conservatives alike. But while the final package is a necessary first step to overhauling the nation’s out-of-control financial sector, it will do very little to change the destructive status quo on […]
Astonishingly, as Wall Street reform enters its final hours a tired, generic corporate refrain against regulation is gaining traction. As bigwig bankers and their lobbyist brethren fight to defeat tough new rules on derivatives—the crazy casino that brought down AIG—all their sloganeers can come up with is the trite wail that serious rules will send […]
A coalition of conservative New Democrats, whose leader is being investigated by a Congressional ethics committee over Wall Street fundraising, has officially come out in favor of gutting financial reform. The issue they’ve targeted: derivatives, the most closely watched effort of the bank overhaul. Good luck in November, guys. New Democrats like to say they […]
The tough derivatives overhaul proposed by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., has emerged as the key fight in Wall Street reform. That status is well-deserved. Despite Lincoln’s record as a stooge for corporate executives, she is pushing what is by far the most significant threat to the Wall Street bonus machine currently on the table. But […]
Corporate lobbyist Lanny Davis, former legal counsel for President Clinton, is launching his own firm next week, and he is previewing his tactics with a slimy and erroneous diatribe against progressives in general and against the Campaign for America’s Future in particular. His column this week in The Hill and The Huffington Post lambastes “elements […]
As the House and Senate publicly iron out their differences on Wall Street reform during conference committee, the most important aspect of the overhaul is gaining strength behind the scenes. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., is standing firm on her tough derivatives bill, and continues to garner unlikely allies from within the Federal Reserve as the […]
5:15 It is generally bad news that Barney Frank is backing this effort to gut the Franken amendment. That’s the only serious reform effort on the table today, and for Frank to be coming out against it implies that he’s much more willing to do Wall Street’s dirty work in the conference committee than his […]