Category: Financial Reform

Conference Committee negotiations on Wall Street reform begin today, with several key battles still unresolved. Thanks to intense progressive pressure, those negotiations are going to be televised live. You can watch the sessions on the web right here, using a stream provided by the Sunlight Foundation. Stay tuned to see if negotiators tip their hand…

We\’re here at AFN – the America\’s Future Now conference – liveblogging a session called \”Curbing Wall Street: Strategies Going Forward.\” It\’s a subject close to our heart. The panelists are Heather McGhee from Demos, Heather Booth from Americans for Financial Reform, George Goehl , investment advisor and Move Your Money visionary Robert Johnson, and…

It\’s an interesting time to be a progressive in the United States. In many ways, the election of President Barack Obama represented a logical, if improbable, end to the era of phony Reaganomics and demonization politics. But the Obama presidency has been a serious test for the progressive movement. The leaders in Washington who were…

Today\’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing on credit rating agencies promises to shed quite a bit of light on one of the most profitable and corrupt businesses in Corporate America. Rating agencies score huge profits regardless of how accurate their ratings prove, and thus never felt any serious pain from the financial crisis, despite the…

It\’s been apparent for several weeks that the largest U.S. banking behemoths will remain as big and dangerous as they are today once President Barack Obama signs off on the Wall Street reform bill. But individual oversized banks are not the only problem Big Finance poses to the economy—the overall sector is much too large,…

Thursday night\’s passage of Wall Street reform by the U.S. Senate is an event to be celebrated, but several key issues remain in play as the House and Senate seek to iron out differences between their respective versions of the legislation. And while the final bill will provide regulators with important new tools to fight…

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. Cantwell has been trying to fix a fatal loophole in the derivatives language which prevents regulators from enforcing new rules on the secretive shadow markets…

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 Levin objected, presumably because his amendment to implement the Volcker Rule was not included. This was an explicit attempt to weaken the bill and block…

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 Angelo\” program, naming the Democrat from Connecticut as one of the top beneficiaries of the subprime kingpin\’s political favors program. It\’s too late for Dodd…

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 to be waged, all of which would significantly change the way Wall Street does business. We will not fix Wall Street with this round of…