"Words that make actions speak louder."
Today is the big day: thousands of people will march on Wall Street this afternoon to protest big bank abuses. After watching Wall Street stack the economic deck against, well, just about everybody, it’s time for reform. Big Banks secured the most generous bailout in history back in 2008, and today they’re back to business […]
Last night, Senate Republicans proved beyond any doubt that when it comes to the economy, they stand with Wall Street and against everybody else. Joined by lone Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Republicans successfully filibustered the procedural technicality of opening debate on Wall Street reform. It’s an unmistakable ploy to kill the bill and collect […]
Last week, Larry Summers, the top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, gave a startlingly dishonest interview with PBS Newshour’s Jeffrey Brown. When asked directly why the White House was not pushing to break up the nation’s largest banking behemoths, Summers responded with a lie that rivals the recent whoppers told by Mitch McConnell. Breaking […]
Sarah Palin’s broadside against the Obama administration’s Wall Street reform proposal is an interesting study in, well, hackery. One the one hand, her latest Facebook post is a disingenuous smear, loaded with outright lies. On the other, she’s kind of onto something, in her own horrible way. It’s a little silly to offer a serious […]
I generally find Andy Kroll to be both a rigorous and persuasive journalist. He knows what he’s talking about on Wall Street reform, and he routinely pens informative yet approachable articles about very complicated subjects. So I was both surprised and disappointed to see his piece from this past Thursday, in which he argues that […]
The next few weeks will be crucial for the effort to rein in the Wall Street casino and hold the bailout barons accountable. Here’s a list of major Wall Street reform rallies taking place around the country in the coming weeks. With the Wall Street bill going to the Senate floor, make sure your voice […]
While playing hardball seems to be working to maximize the chances for decent Wall Street reform, the finesse game appears to be working in the climate debate. On the heels of President Obama’s offshore drilling plan Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein reports today that the main oil lobby may take a neutral position on the forthcoming […]
The political battle over Wall Street reform is finally being engaged in earnest. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has formally thrown in his party’s lot with the nation’s largest banks, and to their credit, Democrats appear to be pushing back, both on politics and policy. McConnell has been arguing this week that the reform […]
There are two types of financial outrages: acts that are outrageously illegal, and acts that are, outrageously, legal. Yesterday’s Senate hearing on the rise and fall of Washington Mutual was a rare examination of the former outrage, documenting the pervasive practice of fraud at every level of the now-defunct bank’s business. All of Washington Mutual’s […]
4:25 Levin is ripping Killinger on option-ARM delinquencies. WaMu performed a study concluding that option-ARMs were about to default like crazy, and right after that study, WaMu started pushing option-ARM securities hard to investors. The company sold a $3 billion batch of these securities on an “urgent” basis, according to internal emails, which is a […]