The most courageous vote yesterday in the Senate was cast by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who refused to let the Senate sign-off on an unnecessarily weak Wall Street reform bill. […]
UPDATE 1:00 P.M Dodd just tried to move on amendments by Sens. Snowe, R-Maine, Landrieau, D-La., Vitter, R-La., and Whitehouse, D-R.I., and then proceed to the cloture vote. Sen. Carl […]
Few realized it at the time, but Senator Chris Dodd’s political career ended on June 12, 2008. That day, Portfolio magazine published its blistering expose on Countrywide Financial’s “Friends of […]
Some version of Wall Street reform is going to pass the Senate this week. The question now is how strong that reform will be. There are still three crucial battles […]
The top Republican fundraiser in the Senate, John Cornyn of Texas, just gave a preposterous speech on Wall Street reform in which he pushed the plan recently promoted recently by […]
There are two consumer protection amendments getting serious attention on the Senate floor this week, one of them positive, one of them incredibly destructive. Both revolve around the concept of […]
240 former legislators, bank committee staffers, and Treasury officials deployed to lobby. $600 million spent in lobbying, trade association activity and political contributions since March 2008. And that is just […]
The Senate approved an amendment from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that would subject the Federal Reserve’s bailout operations to a one-time audit. The vote was 96 – 0 in favor […]
Last week, Congress decided it would not confront Too Big To Fail, the single gravest threat to our collective financial security. But there are still several key Wall Street reforms […]
Late last night, the U.S. Senate rejected the single most important element of Wall Street reform by a vote of 33 to 61. The SAFE Banking Act would have forced […]
Word is circulating through Capitol Hill right now that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) has agreed to back a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve, paving the way for the almost […]
Now that the ideological defense of Wall Street behavior has collapsed, brought down by the wreckage of deregulation, bankers and lobbyists are pursuing a new strategy: fighting the democratic process […]
J.P. Morgan Chase, America’s largest warehouse of arrogant financial elites, has issued yet another deceptive lobbyist smear in the guise of an “analyst report.” Yesterday, the megabank’s Chief Economist James […]
Despite all of the attention heaped on the Treasury Department and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Federal Reserve served as the chief bank bailout engine in the U.S. economy […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Let’s have a frank talk about an uncomfortable subject: Progressives need to raise campaign money in order to get elected and stay in office. Sometimes that money has to come […]
The banking lobby, as corporate lobbies are wont to do, can build a wonderful Potemkin village of consumer delights, where a defanged government beholden to business interests smiles as unfettered […]
The reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve — cleverly timed to defuse the news of burgeoning federal deficits — was preordained. The “markets” demanded it, and […]
The seeds of the 2008 financial meltdown were sown in a conservative ideology that worshiped Wall Street deregulation and devalued Main Street needs. We’re fighting for an end to the idea that any financial institution is “too big to fail” and too important to be held accountable for its actions. We want to expand Congress’ post-crash financial reforms to protect the interests of ordinary consumers and small investors, and restore balance to a system that has too often tilted to favor large financial institutions.