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By Michael Dobbs
$19.11
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By Gore Vidal
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AP
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By Joe Conason — If the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti carry any message for those of us fortunate enough not to live in those places, perhaps it is that government regulation could save your life—while right-wing ideology may kill you someday.
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dodd.senate.gov
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Plans to create an independent agency to provide consumer financial protection have probably been scrapped. According to a leaked document, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd is proposing that the protection office be within the Treasury Department instead of being independent, a clear capitulation to the Republicans.
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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The logic of global capitalism is everywhere. New investigations are showing that the same Wall Street tactics—and companies—that ushered our own economy to economic collapse have emerged to exacerbate Greece’s current financial crisis.
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BBC
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During her speech at a logging conference in Redding, Calif., on Monday, Sarah Palin criticized California’s environmental regulations, pointed to her polar-bear-related lawsuit against the federal government, and compared certain global warming research to “snake oil science.”
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AP / Henny Ray Abrams
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In what is being hailed as the biggest bid to change financial regulation since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, the House of Representatives on Friday passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009. In a press conference after the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed, “We are sending a clear message to Wall Street: The party is over.”
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The Federal Communications Commission has a long and disappointing history of generally failing to regulate ever-larger media and telecommunications companies, except, during fits of prudishness, in the area of so-called indecency. But the latest incarnation of the FCC is proving to be more of a consumer advocate than its predecessors. (continued)
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AP / Alex Brandon
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By Robert Scheer — What’s up with Barack Obama? Finally someone has a good idea about how to deal with Wall Street and the White House condemns it.
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blogspot.com
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In a move to quell public outrage, President Obama has ordered the government’s “pay czar” to cut by 90 percent the multimillion-dollar salaries that executives of seven bank and auto companies are receiving, citing the fact that these firms are entirely dependent on U.S. taxpayer money for financial survival.
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AP / Jae C. Hong
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By Bill Boyarsky — One way to give people a good deal on their health care is the so-called public option. A better way is the kind of strong regulation that isn’t even being discussed.
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Flickr / brewbook
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Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski proposed two rules Monday that would preserve the Internet’s status quo of openness and equality. If the rules are adopted, Internet service providers—including mobile carriers—would be barred from restricting or blocking access to “lawful” content.
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Mike Keefe, The Denver Post —
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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 / Roger@elaws ?
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A year after Lehman Brothers went under—taking a big chunk of the economy with it—the deregulation and lax oversight that enabled the crisis are still a problem. According to this New York Times report, things might even be worse.
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Flickr / Katrina.Tuliao
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The geniuses on Wall Street have found another way to gamble and call it investing. Forget about mortgage-backed securities (wouldn’t that be nice?). Life insurance securitizations are the new hotness on Wall Street. And the fun part is, they make more money when you die faster.
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AP photo / Louis Lanzano
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By Robert Scheer — Bernard Madoff should be exhibit A in why the dark world of totally unregulated private money managers and hedge funds should be opened to the light of systematic government supervision. Instead, he is being treated as an aberrant menace.
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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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Everyone’s favorite client No. 9 is making the rounds of the cable news shows and is actually dropping some interesting takes on the economy and Wall Street regulation. Check out his two-part interview with Rachel Maddow.
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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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Flickr / NeilsPhotography
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The Food and Drug Administration may soon have control over the tobacco industry, if legislation survives Senate obstacles. The bill passed by a wide margin in the House, where its principal sponsor, Rep. Henry Waxman, said, “It has taken us far too long to get to this point.”
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By William Pfaff — The globalization of the international economy launched as an accidental policy of the Clinton administration has proved to be a destroyer of people, governments and wealth.
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Flickr/dcJohn
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Faced with the glaring problem of indulgence and intractability on the highest tiers of Wall Street’s corporate behemoths, the Obama administration is putting together a plan to make financial institutions more accountable and more transparent to the government and to the taxpayers who granted them buoyancy.
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abcnews.com
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A CIA sex scandal, or, more precisely, allegations that a CIA agent raped two Algerian women, has raised questions in Congress about how the agency polices itself. Oddly, discussions of the controversy have failed to emphasize another significant “oops” moment in CIA operations regarding corruption and the need for oversight: torture.
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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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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Obama’s message was plain: The era of bashing government is over. So, too, is the folklore of a marketplace capable of producing abundance without regulation, oversight or public intervention.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Barack Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends, and in doing so he will confuse a lot of people.
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marcelinopena.files.wordpress.com
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Forget that business with the maid whose work papers expired. The real scandal with Timothy Geithner, Barack Obama’s choice to head the Treasury Department, is his history of lax regulation—at least where his friends at Citigroup were concerned. ProPublica did some digging and found that Geithner’s New York Fed “eased the reins as the company blew billions. ...”
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The Treasury Department’s inspector general has been looking into the failure of IndyMac, which set the taxpayers back $8.9 billion, and what he found isn’t pretty. It seems a certain regulator let the bank present itself as “well-capitalized” when the truth was something entirely different.
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By Marie Cocco — Over the past 10 months, as the hemorrhage of jobs began to push the national unemployment rate toward its October level of 6.5 percent, about 3 million Americans were thrown off the insurance rolls or had their incomes fall so much that they became eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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By Joe Conason — Barack Obama’s appointees will implement the Obama program, not only because that is what he tells them to do but because that is what they have come to believe is best for the country.
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By Marie Cocco — This week marks a decade since a consortium of state attorneys general negotiated the landmark settlement of lawsuits against tobacco companies. The results are in: Cigarette consumption has declined by 28 percent in the past 10 years.
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Barack Obama covered a lot of ground during his first post-election interview Sunday. The president-elect said he will close Guantanamo, re-regulate the economy and wait until he’s settled before getting his daughters that puppy. Michelle Obama, joining her husband, said she will become an active first lady once her children make the adjustment to their new home.
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Flickr / Matthias Winkelmann
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For all the talk of checks and balances, the president has sweeping powers. Barack Obama is expected to demonstrate that by quickly reversing as many as 200 of President Bush’s executive orders after taking the oath of office Jan. 20. The president-elect has reportedly had scores of advisers working on the matter for months.
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White House / Shealah Craighead
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The former Fed chair told angry lawmakers on Thursday that after 40 years of buying into free-market ideology he had “found a flaw.” Rep. Henry Waxman told Greenspan “our whole economy is paying the price” because he ignored advice and resisted regulation.
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By Marie Cocco — The essential fallacy of the 401(k) has been exposed. It took a historic market collapse—one that threatens to impoverish workers already in retirement and those who are nearing it.
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Wikimedia Commons / Ansgar Walk
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Not only is George W. Bush’s secretary of the interior trying to rewrite endangered species protections, he also appears to be tuning out public input, which is required by law. Scientists and activists from more than 100 environmental groups have signed a petition demanding a longer, more democratic hearing before environmental protection goes the way of the icecaps.
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NASA
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The agencies responsible for the welfare of endangered species are proposing rule changes that would cut through all the red tape keeping animals such as the bald eagle alive. True to the administration’s tradition of considering the fox before the hen house, officials hope the changes will assist frustrated developers.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades.
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Flickr / wwarby
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke expects America’s economic struggles to continue well into next year and has asked Congress to expand his regulatory powers. Lawmakers are unlikely to fulfill his request any time soon. Bernanke also suggested that the Fed could continue to bail out investment banks.
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commons.wikimedia.org / NASA
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A former EPA official alleged Tuesday that the vice president’s office influenced congressional testimony about the public health effects of climate change. Last October, it was revealed that six of 14 pages of the proposed testimony of the director of the Centers for Disease Control were deleted because so many references to global warming had been cut.
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There’s a lot more to object to in the new FISA bill than just retroactive immunity for the telecoms. It seems that the regulation of surveillance is still hopelessly out of date. How is a court supposed to handle complex algorithms and countless terabytes of data? Truthdig contributor Elliot Cohen warns that the new law could conceivably allow the theft of the 2008 presidential election.
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Flickr / maveric2003
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The United States has long enjoyed lecturing the communist government of China over the conduct of that nation’s economy. How times have changed. Chinese officials have recently criticized the United States’ “warped conception” of regulation, among other economic blunders.
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Flickr / alforque
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A former EPA official, Jason Burnett, told congressional investigators that the White House interfered in a decision regarding California’s regulation of carbon emissions. EPA staff members were unanimous in supporting California’s right to tougher restrictions, Burnett said, but after the agency spoke with the White House and got “input into the rationale” from Bush aides, the state’s request was denied.
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By Marie Cocco — The latest plot twists are stunners, even as they unfold against the scandalous backdrop of the Bush administration’s sorry regulatory record.
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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has announced what the media are calling a “massive overhaul” of America’s regulatory agencies, but columnist and liberal economist Paul Krugman isn’t impressed. Krugman doesn’t think the administration’s cosmetic solutions will mitigate our current economic crisis or prevent the next one.
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Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama gave major economic policy speeches Thursday, outlining specific proposals and highlighting John McCain’s relative weakness on the subject. Obama called for a boost in regulation and an additional $30 billion in stimulus while Clinton proposed a job retraining program.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries, and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.
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By Marie Cocco — With Labor Day approaching, it must not go unnoticed that Angelo Mozilo, chief executive of Countrywide Financial—the company that has helped drive world markets into turmoil with its lending—raked in $42.9 million last year. The Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, chief executive of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was paid $2.5 million.
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Real American Boy: How Our Byzantine Immigration System and Failed Economy May Have Made a Terrorist
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