"Words that make actions speak louder."
Last week, Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke finally acknowledged that his preferred “solution” for ending Too-Big-To-Fail is likely unworkable. When the financial crisis exploded in 2008, top Fed and Treasury officials insisted that they did not have the legal authority to shut down faltering megabanks, leaving them no choice but to resort to massive bailouts. At […]
Peter Orszag’s maiden voyage as a New York Times columnist resonates with twenty years of failed economic policy. It’s a grab bag of Robert Rubin’s Greatest Hits, remixed by a younger DJ for new audiences. It’s all there: The mythologizing of the markets. The ritualized search for “credibility.” The search for a middle ground position, […]
A lot of CNBC anchors do not seem to understand how regulation works. In fact, it seems like the network’s anchors don’t really get how competition works. If you’ve tuned into the business channel this summer, chances are you’ve heard its anchors pushing the ridiculous bank lobbyist mantra that new consumer protections will actually make […]
Picture this: You’re lying in the dark with a broken leg. Somebody comes by every couple of days to give you water and a little food, but you’re wasting away. Suddenly a figure appears holding a candle. In the flickering light we see Tim Geithner’s face. “Hey, there!” He says. “Do you realize that if […]
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 […]
Wall Street reform passed Congress today, with three Republicans voting “yes,” among them Scott Brown of Massachusetts. But Brown’s vote came with a high price tag: he insisted on both hammering ordinary citizens with new taxes, instead of imposing them on the financial behemoths that jeopardize our economic stability. And he punched an enormous loophole […]
Good news: The Senate just secured 60 votes to proceed on Wall Street reform, clearing the way for the legislation’s final passage today or Saturday. The legislation garnered the votes of every Democrat except Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who argued that the bill was too weak to support. Every Republican opposed the bill, except Sens. […]
Too-big-to-fail is a much bigger problem than you thought. We’ve all read damning accounts of the government saving banks from their risky subprime bets, but it turns out that the Wall Street privilege problem is far more deeply ingrained in the U.S. legal system than the simple bailouts witnessed in 2008. America’s largest banks can […]
The following was my contribution to The Hill’s weekly “blogger face-off,” as the conservative Ace of Spades and myself answered the question “Like Sen. Graham said, will the Tea Party movement die out?” Tea Party: Nothing New. Nothing Big. Was GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham correct when he told the New York Times Magazine that the […]
You know that Wall Street reform bill pending in the Senate? Some last minute insertions add up to a surprisingly big win for the developing world. Oil Companies Required to Detail the Dough Paid to Foreign Governments First, kudos to Senators Dick Lugar (R-Indiana) and Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) for inserting strong provisions that require extractive […]