Category: Financial Reform

I don\’t hate Jamie Dimon. He\’s smart and hard-working, and undoubtedly wants to believe that his work contributes to society. But his bank continues to harm millions of Americans, and his political activism is helping an entire industry pilfer and endanger the economy. Now he\’s started to publicly express feelings of hurt and rejectedness, and…

Thanks to tremendous public pressure and the recently passed Wall Street reform bill, the U.S. Federal Reserve was forced to reveal the details of its emergency bailout of the financial sector for the first time yesterday. From a quick review of the data now available on the Federal Reserve website, we can see that the…

While the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill did too little to address the problem of “too big to fail” banks, one of the big wins for reformers was the bill’s strong derivatives chapter which drags risky “over the counter” derivatives trades out of the shadows and into the light of day. Reformers won strong provisions…

There are lots of things to be thankful for in this world, and I\’ve got a pretty good list: A loving family, the glittering splendor of the cascading galaxies, Eddie Hinton\’s guitar solo on the Staples Singers\’ \”I\’ll Take You There\” [1]… you know, the usual stuff. But here\’s something you may not think warrants…

Only 6% of Americans think Congress should concentrate on reducing the deficit or changing the tax code, according to the latest CBS News poll. Nearly ten times as many people, 56%, want it to focus on creating jobs and fixing the economy. Guess which set of policies is the center of attention in Washington right…

The conservative wing of the Democratic Party just drove it over a cliff, but you\’d never know if from reading Matt Bai\’s latest New York Times piece. It\’s the latest in a series of Bai paeans to that odd mix of ideologies and opportunism that Washington types persist in calling \”centrism,\” despite its ever-increasing distance…

I have been writing about the Tea Party, and asking what they will do if/when the DC Republicans betray them. CAF has set up a page for the Tea Party Getting Played series. So, how\’s that new Tea Party Congress working out for Tea Party supporters who expected that the lobbyists were going to be…

Last night\’s real winner wasn\’t a party or an ideology. The real winner was Wall Street. Once again the wealthy and powerful have applied the Shock Doctrine to US politics, using a financial crisis to increase their power. The Democratic Party tried to accommodate the Wall Street crowd for two years and failed. Now Democrats…