Obama must now prime the pump to get us out of a multi-pronged mess left over from the Bush crowd and seven years of Republican control. Republicans chose to look the other way and ignore the financial chicanery going on right in front of them, while the income gap between the very wealthy and average [...]
Filed in Essays, News Blurbs
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Also tagged Al Franken, Banking, Capitalism, Debt, Deficit, Economy, Free Market, Jobs, Middle Class, Obstructionism, Reform, Regulation, Republicans, Safety Net, Trickle Down, Unemployment
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Monday, February 15, 2010
There has been widespread public anger against the hubris of the banks, who are regarded as being to blame for the financial crisis. Their bonus policies, which have persisted even after the system has been bailed out by the taxpayer, have been attacked by politicians and the media. But what I can’t understand is why [...]
Monday, February 15, 2010
Can someone shut these banking industry narcissists up?
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The industry’s inability to see, much less admit, any culpability, and hence the need for root and branch reform, is pathological. The reaction of the bank chiefs, at least as depicted by Schwarzman, is utter denial. It’s as if someone who drove his car at 150 miles an [...]
The worst of the bad guys, nearly everyone agrees, are the so-called Big Six: JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Experts believe the first four alone hold at least 40 percent of our nation’s deposits and half of all bank assets.
But despite ANWF’s nationwide rallies — which remained [...]
You’ve heard plenty about the big banks’ role in the Great Recession, but their headaches are about to get worse.
At a packed hearing today, the Senate investigations subcommittee led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) shed new light on banks’ negligence and wrongdoing—and this time it’s not credit-default swaps or derivatives but money laundering and arms dealers. The [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Angola, Bailouts, Bank of America, Banking, Carl Levin, Citibank, Corporatism, Corruption, Crime, Great Recession, HSBC, Lobbyists, Money Laundering, Senate, Shell Corporations
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Thursday, February 4, 2010
For worried Democrats, the sudden return of Social Security privatization as a fashionable nostrum among Republicans should lift their gloom. Or it would if only the Democratic leaders understood what to do when their opponents deliberately step into a messy dogpile again.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a pair of the most outspoken conservatives in [...]
Thursday, February 4, 2010
In the grand tradition of his predecessor Eliot Spitzer, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is generating tons of publicity by whacking Wall Street with a big fat stick. But even if you are predisposed to dismiss the civil fraud suit his office filed Thursday against former Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis and former chief [...]
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms” needed by the public. “The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged AIG, Bailouts, Banking, Bonuses, Christopher Dodd, Congress, Corporatism, Executive Compensation, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, Lobbyists, Reform, Senate
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Thursday, February 4, 2010
The 325-page report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which will conduct a hearing on Thursday, sheds new light on how banks like Citigroup, Wachovia and Bank of America unwittingly shifted hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of African politicians, their relatives and associates.
The banks ended up closing or restricting the accounts and cooperated [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Bailouts, Bank of America, Banking, Carl Levin, Citigroup, Corporatism, Corruption, Fraud, Money Laundering, PEP, Regulation, Shell Corporations, Wachovia
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Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Exposing this entirely legal labyrinth of ownership took years of interagency pick-and-ax work. In the end it demonstrated how nefarious activity — even as high profile as this — can go on for years, right under authorities’ noses. It’s also meant that tenants of the prestigious Manhattan property have been paying millions in rent to [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Alavi Foundation, Bank Melli, Banking, Business, Cayman Islands, Corporatism, Corruption, Delaware, Drug Trafficking, Financial Secrecy, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, IMF, Iran, Law, Money Laundering, Offshore Banking, Panama, Semion Mogilevich, Shell Companies, Shell Corporations, Sinaloa, Switzerland, Tax Evasion, Tax Havens, Terrorism Funding, Transparency, Victor Bout
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Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts.
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The singer Billy Bragg has reiterated calls for bonuses at RBS to be capped as he prepared to withhold his [...]
Extended interview with top TARP cop, Harvard Professor, Elizabeth Warren. Shes sassy and real and tells it like it is…
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Alan Grayson discusses executive compensation in the House Financial Services Committee with Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz, Lucian Bebchuk and Nell Minow. Why is Grayson among the very few public representatives really standing up for America? (I’d count Kucinich, Sanders, and a few others in that group.) Is every other representative completely spineless or beholden to corporations and their lobbyists? [...]
The risk that deteriorating government finances could push economies into full-fledged debt crises tops a list of threats facing the world in 2010, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.
Major world economies have responded to the financial crisis with stimulus packages and by underwriting private debt obligations, causing deficits to balloon. This may [...]
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Whether you’re an environmentalist or someone who’s looking at peak energy or peak other things, green is an answer but green itself is very resource intensive.
That is a quandary that we haven’t faced up to in any way, shape or form. We just don’t get it. There are a lot of major dots that have to [...]
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