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By Morris Berman
$10.80
By Celia Chazelle (Editor), Simon Doubleday (Editor), Felice Lifshitz (Editor), Amy G. Remensnyder (Editor)
$20
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By Robert Reich — The West, Texas, chemical and fertilizer plant where at least 15 people were killed and more than 200 injured a few weeks ago hadn’t been fully inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985.
Posted on May 5, 2013
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Shutterstock image of bank.
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Now that Wall Street has managed to neuter and delay the modest reforms passed by Congress, there is more political momentum to pass stricter financial regulations.
Posted on May 1, 2013
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Shutterstock photo of a bill fragment with blood spots.
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By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law —
The already tepid reforms enacted by Dodd-Frank are falling prey to business leaders, Republican lawmakers and the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Posted on Apr 30, 2013
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kevin dooley (CC BY 2.0)
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This month we learned that regulators will not reveal any shenanigans discovered by the highly paid “independent” consultants big banks hired under orders from the government to review potential wrongdoing on their part in the foreclosure/robo-signing scandal.
Posted on Apr 30, 2013
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AP/Osamu Honda
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By Robert Scheer — Where is the Occupy movement now that the depravity of the super rich is on full display?
Posted on Mar 5, 2013
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Abhisit Vejjajiva (CC BY 2.0)
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Joseph Stiglitz, “one of the few members of the economics profession committed to scientific empiricism, not ideology or servitude to the rich,” as one reader put it, writes that the habit of tax avoidance typical of Mitt Romney’s class makes it difficult to publicly fund things like education, technology, and infrastructure, upon which modern economies depend to flourish.
Posted on Sep 4, 2012
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blakespot (CC BY 2.0)
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Doctors, drugmakers, regulators and lobbyists pushed high doses of medications that may have been ineffective or at times even lethal on millions of anemic patients over two decades, making upward of $8 billion a year for two companies. “How did this happen?” asks Peter Whoriskey of The Washington Post.
Posted on Jul 20, 2012
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A Japanese parliamentary inquiry concluded that last year’s disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was “a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.” Former nuclear industry executive Arnie Gundersen talks about the significance of the report for U.S. nuclear facilities.
Posted on Jul 6, 2012
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By David Sirota — They may balk at regulation, but unlike textile or electronics firms, fossil fuel companies are extracting a resource that is relatively rare, altogether finite and—most important—tied to specific geographies.
Posted on Jun 21, 2012
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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon may be less concerned with the actual $2 billion his bank lost than the credence it lends to calls for tougher regulation.
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AP/Richard Drew
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By Megan Murphy and Vanessa Houlder, Financial Times, and Jeff Gerth, ProPublica —
In November 2001, the Bank of New York quietly transferred nearly $8 billion of its assets—almost 10 percent of its holdings at the time—to a trust in the small, business-friendly state of Delaware in a critical first step in setting up a tax shelter that has cost the government more than $1 billion in revenue in the past decade.
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DonkeyHotey (CC-BY)
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By Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica —
In late 2010, a major regulator warned the Federal Reserve: Banks are not healthy enough to increase dividends, and the economy could implode again. But the Fed ignored that advice.
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AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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By Cora Currier, ProPublica —
Fannie and Freddie are required to help homeowners while earning profits so they can pay back the taxpayers who bailed them out. Here is our guide to the little-known federal regulator, Edward DeMarco, ultimately in charge of the two companies. You may have never heard of him, but as The Washington Post put it, he’s “the most powerful man in housing policy.”
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AP / NBC News / William B. Plowman
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Jack Lew is a liberal who worked for Speaker Tip O’Neill and studied under beloved progressive Sen. Paul Wellstone, but he was also the chief operating officer of a Citigroup unit and doesn’t fault deregulation for the shoddy economy. (more)
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Moyan Brenn (CC-BY-ND)
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By Richard Reeves — The good news of the day is that Bill Moyers is coming back to television next January. The bad news is that Coca-Cola seems to be winning its battle to fill the Grand Canyon with empty plastic bottles.
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By Joe Conason — Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is disturbed by the monopolistic power of the ratings agencies—and still determined to curb their abuses, as he tried to do last year with an amendment to the Dodd-Frank banking reform bill.
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Flickr / GregPC
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In a time of critical problems such as climate change and high unemployment, Barack Obama’s regulatory czar is busy trying to secure the president’s re-election by indulging the anti-regulatory appetites of gluttonous corporations, according to a report by Dan Froomkin.
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Flickr / woodleywonderworks
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Don’t mistake the claims of relative unimportance coming from the big shots on Wall Street before an audience of federal regulators over the past several months for some sort of newfound humility. (more)
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Marc Nozell (CC-BY)
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Birch Evans “Evan” Bayh III, darling of conservative Democrats, left the Senate to find “better ways to serve my fellow citizens.” So far he has signed on as a Fox News contributor and Chamber of Commerce lobbyist. (more)
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Meredith Attwell Baker, one of two Republican FCC commissioners, voted in late January to approve the merger of Comcast and NBC. Less than four months later, she announced that she is leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for the merged company. (more)
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Flickr / kathleencaring
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The U.S. is caught up in three wars, a budget crisis and high unemployment. So what are Republican politicians working on? Cutting long-standing environmental regulations and shifting the burden of oversight from the federal to the state level.
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Flickr / wallyg
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With murmurs of a veto in the background, Republicans successfully pushed a measure through the U.S. House rejecting the FCC’s 2010 net neutrality rules for Internet service providers.
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Taro the Shiba Inu (CC-BY)
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Netflix had its share of skeptics when the company known for mailing DVDs started streaming movies such as “Alien vs. Ninja” on demand, but enough people paid for the privilege that Netflix has been able to increase the quality of content on offer—and the threat to those cable pirates who have the nerve to charge ... (more)
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Flickr / qmnonic (CC-BY)
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The legislation that President Obama signed Tuesday represents the biggest revamp of the country’s food regulation system in decades—that is, if it gets past those congressional Republicans spoiling for a fight as they pledge to crack down on government spending this year.
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Flickr / kevindooley (CC-BY)
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An international panel of banking regulators from 27 nations is aiming to crack down on outlandish pay packages for industry executives by proposing a new set of rules that call for more transparency and, wonder of wonders, some correlation between ...
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AP / Matt Rourke
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By Elliot D. Cohen — The recent FCC decision to “protect” the free and open Internet was long awaited by activists but it turned out to be smoke and mirrors, catering largely to service providers such as Comcast and AT&T.
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Flickr / CaptainBuilder
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Though it was politically vague and took no immediate action, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it will put some regulatory pressure on power plants and oil refineries to limit greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2012.
Posted on Dec 24, 2010
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Flickr / balleyne (CC-BY-SA)
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How is one to make sense of the FCC’s big vote Tuesday? Does it represent a gain for the net-neutrality cause, or is the corporate takeover of the Web upon us in earnest? Well, one thing seems certain: Nobody is all that happy with the outcome—except, that is, for some lobbyists.
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By David Sirota — Frank Sinatra once said that if he could make it in New York, he could make it anywhere. Thanks to new drilling rules, environmentalists can now say the same about Wyoming.
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AP / Wong Maye-E
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In a spare-no-one, off-the-cuff critique, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker delivered a blistering analysis of the nation’s financial system Thursday, criticizing banks, regulators, business schools, the Fed and money-market funds in a “plea for structural changes in markets and market regulation.”
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Wikimedia Commons / AgnosticPreachersKid
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Remember that crazy time back in May when the Dow Jones unexpectedly dropped by almost 1,000 points in only half an hour? Well, the SEC has finally worked in some protection against such sudden plunges by expanding the number of stocks subject to its current “circuit-breaker rule.”
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Flickr / The Pug Father (CC-BY)
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Google and Verizon have decided they would do a better job writing the regulations that govern their Internet businesses, and so the two have come up with a “policy framework” that has progressive groups and net neutrality advocates steamed.
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Photo illustration
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Scott Brown of Massachusetts has decided to support the anemic financial reform bill because, as The Washington Post reports, “he got nearly everything he wanted.” The bill is now expected to pass with the support of at least two other Republicans, including Maine’s Olympia Snowe.
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AP / Richard Drew
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Bank stocks had a surprisingly good day Friday, outperforming the rest of the market after it became clear that financial reform legislation hammered out in Congress would not meddle with precious bank profits.
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AP / Richard Drew
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After a marathon final negotiating session, Congress has cobbled together a historic overhaul of financial regulations for Wall Street. The bill is expected to win final approval next week and land on President Obama’s desk.
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By Joe Conason — Rand Paul, tea party flavor of the month, is said to be avoiding “overexposure.” When he emerges from hiding and explains his most extreme positions, even many Republicans may think twice or three times before they vote for him.
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U.S. Coast Guard / CPO John Kepsimelis
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By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica —
Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.
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Flickr / epicharmus (CC-BY)
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The Senate passed on Thursday what The Wall Street Journal described as “the most extensive overhaul of financial-sector regulation since the 1930s.” The New York Times breaks down what’s in the bill and how it might change when reconciled with the House version. Worth noting: Democrats Russ Feingold and Maria Cantwell voted against the measure.
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Flickr / fccdotgov
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FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has announced that the agency will work to reclassify broadband Internet as a telecommunication service, like the telephone, effectively allowing the agency to oversee Internet transmission.
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Wikimedia Commons
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One wonders if there is a smutty equivalent to Nero’s fiddling while Rome burns. If there is, it might be applicable to the senior staffers at the SEC who spent hours watching pornography on government computers instead of policing the nation’s financial system.
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youtube.com
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It seems the GOP’s “make sure nothing happens in government” approach is still going strong, with Senate Republicans blocking an effort by Democrats to begin debate on widely popular legislation to regulate the nation’s financial system.
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AP / Jose Luis Magana
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In a letter to a ranking Senate Democrat, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called for restrictions on derivatives—those financial instruments whose value is derived from other instruments—but stopped at an outright ban on the trading practices that helped lead to the current financial crisis.
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If you missed Robert Scheer discussing his latest column, the financial meltdown and its enablers with readers or you just want to relive the excitement, you can read a full transcript right here.
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Wikimedia Commons
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President Barack Obama has demanded an investigation into the deaths of 29 miners after an explosion in a West Virginia coal mine brought new and widespread attention to hazards in the mining industry.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — There is a dispiriting and, yes, heartbreaking sameness about how we respond to mining disasters.
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