Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
Former Masters Of The Universe Set To Testify To Crisis Commission
NYT's Andrew Sorkin suggests questions for former Citigroup execs slated to testify later this week: "As a thank-you present for running the bank into the ground, the board gave Mr. Prince a parting gift valued at $12.5 million ... the simple question for Mr. Rubin and Mr. Prince is, Why? Why would you knowingly reward such failure? What is it about the culture of Citigroup and Wall Street..."
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow questions if Alan Greenspan will be held to account in his testimony: "When a former Fed Chairman blames the entire financial crisis on Lehman Brothers, it's like a drunk driver blaming his accident on the wall he struck. Commission members should ask Greenspan to clarify these remarks ... Greenspan asserts in the Brookings paper that asset bubbles are inevitable and can't be prevented. That's another fairly radical position for a central banker to hold ..."
Effectiveness of Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission called into question day before series of major hearings. NYT: "The panel established by Congress to investigate the causes of the financial crisis has been hobbled by delays and internal disagreements and a lack of focus ... Given the delays, the commission’s impact on policy could be modest; the House has already voted on a sweeping financial reform bill, and the Senate could vote on it by summer."
Chris Weigant counsels advocates to frame financial reform as "Wall Street Reform": "... 'Wall Street reform' is actually a dandy frame to hang around the issue, because it cuts to the heart of the debate, it is a catchy phrase, and it also defines the opposition perfectly."
Time's Michael Grunwald pessimistic on Wall Street reform's chances for passage: "...financial reform is so complex and confusing, with so many moving parts, that excuses to say no will be exceedingly easy to find. Even a group of staunch like-minded reformers would have a hard time finding common ground; in fact, that's exactly what happened inside the Obama Administration ... don't be surprised if in a few months you see [Sen. Judd] Gregg shaking his head sadly: If only the Democrats weren't so intransigent about proprietary trading, or 15-1 leverage restrictions or something else you've never thought about, we could've had a deal..."
Robert Reich urges a focus on breaking up the banks: "By all means, give regulators resolution authority and also impose the tightest regulations possible. But Congress and the White House shouldn’t stop there. Limits should be placed on how big big banks can become. How big? No one has been able to show significiant efficiencies over $100 billion in assets. Make that the outside limit. ...But the only way to make sure no bank it too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big. If Congress and the White House fail to do this, you have every reason to believe it’s because Wall Street has paid them not to."
Self-Evident challenges Matt Taibbi's latest, says how JP Morgan screwed Alabama is not how Goldman Sachs screwed Greece: "...what Goldman did for Greece was use off-market currency swaps (i.e., swaps that are based off of market rates, resulting in an up-front payment) to achieve the same result as a direct loan to Greece, thus circumventing EU debt limits and generating some serious fee income for Goldman. This transaction was insane, but not exactly predatory ... Jefferson County’s debt restructuring was an act of pure and simple fraud. The local officials and financial professionals ... did not care at all how the interest rate swaps performed; the transactions were merely a vehicle for enriching themselves."
DMIBlog's Harry Moros covers "the other financial crisis" Wall Street wrought on states and cities: "These stories of municipal misfortune at the hands of big Wall Street banks demonstrate how interconnected the public and private sectors have become in recent years (or, put less charitably, how dependent the private sector has become on public funds in both good times and bad). They also demonstrate why a national infrastructure bank capitalized with federal funds is so important for the construction of big projects of national importance: it offers the potential for an institutionalized, and carefully overseen, process for financing big projects, hopefully eliminating the danger of local officials being duped by clever financiers and removing the opportunity for them to exploit their own political connections."
Jobless Whacked Again By Filibuster
Jobless aid again cut off due to conservative filibuster, but Sen. Jim Bunning tries to shift blame. The Hill: "Bunning (R-Ky.) laid the blame on Democrats for not paying for the cost of extending benefits by either cutting spending elsewhere or raising taxes. Democrats said helping the unemployed should qualify as 'emergency spending' that doesn’t have to be offset with spending cuts or tax increases."
USA Today's DeWayne Wickham charges President with ignoring higher unemployment among African-Americans: "...instead of going to Charlotte to proclaim this jobs growth, the president should have gone to Harlem to explain why black workers are being left behind. While the unemployment rate for white men dropped for the fifth straight month in March to 8.9%, it hit 19% for black men. That's a sizeable 1.2 percentage point jump in a single month. During this same time, unemployment for black women also grew from 12.1% to 12.4%, even as the jobless rate for white women held fast at 7.3%."
Economist's View's Mark Thoma throws in the towel on congressional action to create jobs: "...it's probably time for me to give up and accept that we are going to have a slower recovery than we could have had with more aggressive fiscal policy. Unless there is a dramatic reversal of recent indications that we are at the beginning of a recovery, Congress is not going to provide anything more than token help from here forward."
Labor Dept. launches crackdown on wage theft from low-income workers. WSJ: "The Labor Department is encouraging low-wage and immigrant workers to turn in employers who are shortchanging their pay, as part of an expanding effort to enforce wage and hour rules ... business groups are expressing concern that the Labor Department's effort will generate unfounded complaints ... [Labor] hired more than 250 additional investigators ... and is rolling out a publicity campaign that includes bilingual public-service announcements in Spanish and English."
AFL-CIO Blog's Mike Hall this is a reversal from the attitude of the previous administration: "...under the Bush administration, the number of wage and hour inspectors dropped from 942 to 732. At the same time, the number of investigations into employers’ refusal to pay minimum wage, overtime—or even any wages at all—has dropped from 47,000 in 1997 to 30,000 in 2008. Since taking office, Solis has added 250 new inspectors to the wage and hour division, bringing the total to 949."
Geithner in India with hopes of breaking trade impasse. NYT: "The two countries remain far apart on American farm subsidies and India’s unwillingness to open its markets to foreign farmers, because they both want to protect their agricultural sectors. The countries’ disagreements there helped to scuttle global trade negotiations in 2008."
Climate Roundup
Mother Jones' Kevin Drum isn't buying reports claiming Copenhagen Accord is working, based on "pledges" by nations: "Obviously this gets us closer to our goal of preventing a catastrophic rise in temperature over the next several decades. But not a lot closer. And even these numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt."
TNR's Brad Plumer says the US is the "wild card" on whether Copenhagen pledges mean anything: "It remains wildly unclear what sort of emission cuts Congress is going to agree to this year ... In the next few weeks, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are supposed to unveil a climate bill in the Senate that would (ostensibly) put the United States on track to cut greenhouse gas emisisons 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. That would fulfill the administration's Copenhagen pledge, but it'd still be far below what many scientists consider necessary to avoid a dangerous 2°C rise in temperatures."
Possible fight over possible carbon tax on motor fuels in possible climate bill. The Hill: "A slew of transportation groups are pressing the bill’s architects to ensure all the money raised through planned carbon fees on motor fuels is plowed back into road and transit projects ... Graham said in late March that he envisioned money from the fees going back to consumers and also being used for debt reduction."
King Coal and Big Ag formally challenge EPA's greenhouse gas regs. Greenwire: "Groups including coal, mining and agricultural interests Friday petitioned the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ... to review EPA's policy detailing when the agency must regulate the heat-trapping emissions from industrial facilities ... The groups ... are also parties to a lawsuit filed in December challenging EPA's 'endangerment' finding, a determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare ... The coal giant Massey Energy Co. is also a party to that lawsuit..."
Big Oil funding ballot initiative to gut California's cap-and-trade system. WSJ: "The California Jobs Initiative, the group trying to overturn the greenhouse-gas law, has collected $966,000 in donations ... The biggest donors have been oil companies and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a longtime antitax citizens' group ... Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs, the group fighting the referendum effort, said he had no doubt the measure would get the approximately 434,000 signatures it needed to be on the ballot."
