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By Linda Gordon
$23.10
E.J. Dionne
$29.95
$17
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By Eugene Robinson — I’m as pleased as anyone else to see a rising Dow, but somebody needs to slap the incipient grin off Wall Street’s face.
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Flickr / respres
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John Dunbar of the Center for Public Integrity has analyzed the Obama administration’s home loan modification program, which aims to keep troubled borrowers in their homes, and finds it “highly problematic.”
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Flickr / respres
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John Dunbar of the Center for Public Integrity has analyzed the Obama administration’s home loan modification program, which aims to keep troubled borrowers in their homes, and finds it “highly problematic.”
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By Amy Goodman — It looked like it was business as usual for President Barack Obama on the first day of his vacation, as he spent five hours golfing with a top executive from UBS, a bank that sheltered wealthy tax dodgers while hardworking U.S. taxpayers were bailing it out.
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bloomberg.com
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Swiss bank accounts aren’t what they used to be. Switzerland recently agreed to fork over information on 4,450 UBS AG bank accounts to the IRS as an investigation into suspected tax evasion threatens the good name that Swiss banking has provided to money launderers and tax evaders for centuries.
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AP / Charlie Neibergall
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich talks about winning a big victory for health care reform, grilling Hank Paulson over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger, and the battle against crony capitalism.
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AP / Charlie Neibergall
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich talks about winning a big victory for health care reform, grilling Hank Paulson over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger, and the battle against crony capitalism.
Posted on Jul 17, 2009
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This week’s episode of “Left, Right & Center” takes a look at the doings in Iran and U.S. involvement there, with Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer recalling his interview of a CIA agent who said he organized the 1953 coup in that country. Other topics include two hot issues on the domestic side—U.S. regulatory proposals and health care.
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By David Sirota — Most of the great American advances, from the airplane to the Constitution, were born from reinvention, not tinkering. For all the positive, even admirable steps Obama’s America seems poised to take, the aspirations still seem too small, too unimaginative, too confined by old conceptions of how things must work.
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White House / Pete Souza
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President Obama compares his “sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system” to FDR’s crackdown on Wall Street, but New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera isn’t buying it. “Everywhere you look in the plan, you see the same thing,” he writes. “Additional regulation on the margin, but nothing that amounts to a true overhaul.”
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Robert Scheer — On Monday, two men with considerable responsibility for enabling the banking meltdown confronted the error of their ways. Hopefully Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers’ sudden conversion to common sense indicates the seriousness of the banking regulation plan that their boss, President Obama, will present to Congress today.
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The “Real Time” host has some harsh words for the president, who, he says, is caving to insurance companies, banks and polluters: “This is not getting the job done. And this is not what I voted for.”
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This week on “Left, Right and Center” the gang tackles three big questions: What do today’s Iranian elections mean in the polarized theocracy? What’s going on in the banking world and with the alleged TARP paybacks? And finally, given the partisan divide, will public health care ever become a viable option in the U.S.? Tune in to find out.
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Flickr / The TruthAbout...
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Some of the country’s major banks are prepared to pay back money they borrowed under the TARP program, but don’t get too excited. The initial repayment is expected to be a meager $50 billion, which Timothy Geithner wants to inject right back into other troubled banks.
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Marie Cocco — The public face of Congress is angry and outraged at all the bad behavior by banks, but in the other Washington, the financial industry continues to have its way.
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As if the American people weren’t hurting enough, some banks have been seizing Social Security, disability, veteran and pension benefits from account holders in order to pay off debts, despite federal regulations protecting such funds. A group of legislators has been pressuring the Treasury Department to close the loophole that allows these heinous acts.
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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Mark Ames via Alternet —
Why did Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley steer millions to a company Larry Summers directed while he administered “stress tests” on them?
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NASA / U.S. Treasury
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President Obama has said he doesn’t want public money going into a “black hole,” but his administration’s bank bailout looks more and more like an abyss of cosmic proportions. Not only are the bailed-out banks lending less than before, the Treasury Department appears to be engaging in creative math to obscure the gravity of the situation.
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Flickr / stan
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Like an abused spouse, America continues to stand by the banks, hoping they’ll change their ways. TARP funds were supposed to trickle down to the average taxpayer, but Congress is now investigating complaints that bailed-out banks such as Bank of America and Citigroup are jacking up interest rates and engaging in predatory lending.
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Detail from Creation of the Sun and Moon by Michelangelo
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Do a quick Google search and you’ll find that God, as worshipped by Jews, Christians and Muslims, has some strong feelings about interest charges—or usury, as it’s known in the Hebrew Bible. Here’s a doozy from Ezekiel: “Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.” Ouch.
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William K. Black made a name for himself busting bad bankers and the lawmakers who loved them during the savings and loan scandal. His book, “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One,” says it all. Here he tells Bill Moyers that the treasury secretary is a failed regulator engaged in the cover-up of a massive fraud.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The president’s plan to bail out the banks reveals a deference to the existing financial system that puts him at odds with Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz.
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By Eugene Robinson — The president is telling Detroit to shape up or die while at the same time politely asking Wall Street, whose recklessness and greed caused this economic crisis, if it would be so kind as to accept another heaping helping of taxpayer funds.
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Matt Miller, a host of KCRW’s “Left, Right & Center,” has written a book full of necessary honesty and courage—a welcome effort to rid us of the nostrums and shopworn notions that cloud our thinking and constrain our politics.
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Flickr / epicharmus
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The Toxic Asset Relief Program was originally designed to save the banks from their bad bets by purchasing toxic assets, but has since evolved into something of a multipurpose slush fund. Now the Obama administration is getting back to the business of buying junk, elaborating on a plan that sent the Dow tumbling when it was first announced. Update
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White House / Pete Souza
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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has developed a bad reputation in his short time on the job. He appears to have the fortitude of porridge and a love of banks and the bankers who bankrupt them. Despite calls for Geithner’s ouster over the AIG bonus blunder, the president says he has “complete confidence” in his top economist.
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By Amy Goodman — Taxpayers’ bailout money for AIG bonuses has rightfully provoked a massive backlash against AIG, Wall Street, President Barack Obama and his economic advisers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers.
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In a rare interview with Ben Bernanke broadcast Sunday on “60 Minutes,” the Federal Reserve chairman allowed himself to sound slightly more optimistic, although ever so cautiously so, about the possibility that the American economy will pull out of recession soon—perhaps, he said, by the end of this year.
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Collage from Flickr / mobilestreetlife
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In the face of mounting public outrage, AIG has revealed how it spent $75 billion of taxpayer money, a sum that amounts to less than half of the government’s $170 billion bailout of the firm. AIG says it gave a sizable chunk of the money to banks, including foreign institutions, and spent a pretty penny to cover junk investments.
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By Joe Conason — Things are bad, and very likely to get worse—but the Republicans seem determined to plunge us into a real depression, gambling that catastrophe would return them to power.
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By Eugene Robinson — Advice to solve the financial crisis before even thinking about health care, energy or education is either misguided or disingenuous. Fortunately, Obama seems to be ignoring all the chatter.
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By Marie Cocco — No Wall Street rally can obscure the scary historical prospect that most Americans now working can expect to have less income security in retirement than their parents had.
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Flickr / chakote
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The Dow had a big day on Tuesday, leaping 379 points after Citibank reported two months of profits and Fed chief Ben Bernanke indicated the banks could have some wiggle room in the accounting of their junk assets. The day may have ended with high-fives on Wall Street, but there’s good reason to stay gloomy.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — While conservatives cry socialism, the president is trying to steer a moderate course. Moderation, however, may be the wrong recipe. There is something deeply disturbing about the drip, drip, drip of billions into the banking system with no apparent impact.
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By David Sirota — Recently, I’ve been groping for the precise word to characterize the zeitgeist of this (unfortunately) historic moment—a word I finally found during a visit last week to central Mexico.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If President Obama’s primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation’s divisions around religious and moral questions.
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senate.gov
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Fed chief Ben Bernanke may be able to dole out trillions in the blink of an eye, but on Tuesday he ran headlong into Congress’ only independent democratic socialist. Sen. Bernie Sanders demanded to know where all the Fed’s money was going. Bernanke said “no.” Sanders fired back by introducing a bill that would require such information to be posted to the Fed’s Web site.
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Wikimedia Commons / Paul Sparkes
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The Dow Jones industrial average fell to 6763.29 Monday. In less than a year and a half, the market has lost more than half of its value. More bad news from the financial sector has some analysts worried that rock bottom is still a long way away.
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Wikimedia Commons / Marcello Casal Jr / ABr
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The United States spent much of the 20th century lecturing the world about how to run an economy. Clearly, we’ve lost some credibility in that area. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono wants Islamic banks, with their abhorrence of interest and gambling, to fill the void.
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By David Sirota — Only months after the 2008 primaries, most Americans probably don’t remember Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul. But that doesn’t mean the conservative populism they championed during their campaigns is as fleeting as their dark-horse candidacies.
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Flickr / Foraggio Fotographic
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By Joe Conason — We suddenly seem willing to consider sensible ideas that were always deemed unthinkable. Soon we may be mature enough to observe how other developed countries address problems that have baffled us for generations.
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RJ Matson, The New York Observer —
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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This just in: Not everything is completely awful in the financial arena. Rejoice—stocks went up a little bit! Even if it’s just because Fed Chair Ben Bernanke assured Wall Street that our nation’s banks won’t be nationalized soon, and even if the 2 percent rise happened a day after the Dow dipped to 12-year lows.
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By Marie Cocco — It is time to wipe the term entitlement reform, a monument to the dark art of disinformation, out of the political dictionary. There is no crisis in Social Security, or even in Medicare and Medicaid.
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By Eugene Robinson — It’s reaching the point where desperate measures—brutal honesty and complete transparency—may be the only way to bring the economy out of its kamikaze dive. If so, this won’t be pretty.
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Flickr / stan
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Uncle Sam already gave Citigroup $45 billion and promised to limit the bank’s losses on $300 billion in troubled loans, but executives at the ailing bank are now reportedly asking the federal government to sweeten the deal. One scheme has Washington exchanging preferred stock for common stock.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It makes sense to prop up ailing carmakers. Allowing GM and Chrysler to go bankrupt could be a triggering event that might make a very bad economy much worse.
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Bank of America Lied to Homeowners and Rewarded Foreclosures, Ex-Employees Say
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