Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz said the Fed was "corrupt," Elizabeth Warren said she wanted to fight for the CFPA until there were "blood and teeth" on the floor, and Robert Rubin said "virtually nobody" sa more »
At what point does "bipartisanship" begin to erode the democratic process?
Here's my answer: When it's used to take decision-making power away from voters and place it in the hands of a governing elite - an elite which acts in secret so that its members cannot be held accountable to anyone for their actions.
Democrats traded away some of the most critical elements of health reform for bipartisan comity that never appeared - and yet didn't bring those elements back when the other side of the aisle rebuffed them. Now they appear to be doing the same thing with financial reform. more »
When I worked in the Financial District back in the nineties, the big-shot investment types loved to talk about accountability. Almost all male, they loved macho posturing. They got big money because they took big risks, they'd say. They were the Danger Boys. They had to lay it all on the line every day.
But if there's one thing we've learned in the past couple of years, it's that Wall Street lives in a No-Accountability Culture. It's No Risk, All Reward. more »
motherjones.com — Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., has dealt the death blow to consumer protection. The chairman of the Senate banking committee plans to announce this week the creation of a Bureau of Financial Protection inside the Treasury, instead of an independent, standalone Consumer Financial Protection Agency. That U-turn from his previous support for the agency is a capitulation to Republican and Wall Street opposition.
The pheremonic scent of compromise is inducing euphoria in the nation's capitol once again. Not that there's anything wrong with compromise, if it results in policies that work. But we've just pulled ourselves back from the brink of financial meltdown, and tens of millions of households are experiencing their own economic catastrophes. This is no time to value process over outcome. The danger is that the desire to appear bipartisan may prevent us from creating a system that protects us from either collective or individual economic disaster. more »
Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post waxed lyrical today about the compromise deal on financial regulations proposed Sens. Dodd and Corker, calling it a "creative bipartisan proposal." It's certainly "bipartisan," and it may even be "creative." What it isn't is effective. It's not just a compromise - unfortunately, it's also compromised. more »
motherjones.com — The last thing Democrats want is for Congress' long-promised Wall Street crackdown to become a rerun of health care reform—the House passes a bill, only to see grueling negotiations grind to a halt in the Senate. But as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., prepares to release his proposal for financial reform this week, House lawmakers who have worked on the issue are worried that the talks will once again paralyze the Senate, producing only flimsy restrictions and no agency to protect consumers.
Since the nation's capital is enamored of bipartisanship in all its forms, it's surprising that today's letter from five former Treasury Secretaries - both Democratic and Republican - isn't front page news. The secretaries strongly endorsed the so-called "Volcker rule" in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. more »
Mattel makes a toy called the "Magic 8-Ball." It looks like a pool ball with a little window in it. You ask it a question, then shake it and an answer pops up in the glass. They were a craze in the corporate world a few years back, and you still see lots of them holding down papers on desks across America. more »
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