Will Dodd-Frank Prevent New Megabanks?

On August 22, 2011, In Congress, Corporations, Current Leadership, By Donny Shaw

Last year’s Dodd-Frank financial reform bill didn’t directly fix the too-big-to-fail problem that necessitated the 2008 bailouts. Instead, it allowed the big banks to grow even bigger, but gave regulators new authority to require the big banks to report more information to the government and force them to follow stricter rules. It also gave regulators new guidelines to consider when deciding whether or not to allow bank mergers that could create new too-big-to-fail entities. Basically, the bill took a noncommittal approach to addressing issues of bank size and interconnectedness. Congress punted the big decisions off to regulators and made it possible for regulators to take drastic action, but gave them a lot of leeway to maintain the status quo if they so choose.

These provisions of the bill are about to get their first big test. Capital One, currently the ninth largest bank-holding company in the U.S., has reached an agreement with the Ducth ING Groep to purchase their U.S. arm, ING Direct. They are planning to then turn around and leverage assets gained in that deal to purchase HSBC’s subprime credit card division. The acquisitions would make Capital One the fifth largest bank in the U.S., right behind such infamous too-big-to-fail giants as Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. It would mean that financial assets and power in the U.S. would become even more concentrated in a small group of top corporations.

In Section 163 of Dodd-Frank, the Federal Reserve Board of Governor’s is given new guidelines to consider when deciding whether or not to approve the acquisition of one large bank by another large bank. “The Board of Governors shall consider the extent to which the proposed acquisition would result in greater or more concentrated risks to global or United States financial stability or the United States economy,” the bill states.

This language is typical of the bill. Far from being a dictate from Congress (i.e. no mergers that will create new banks with more than $xxx in assets), it doesn’t even give the Fed a specific directive to reject an acquisition that would result in more concentrated risks. But it clearly does provides them with justification to reject it on those grounds.

In June, Fed Board of Governors member Daneil Tarullo said that regulators should oppose mergers that increase risk in the financial system unless there is a significant public benefit. “The regulatory structure for SIFIs [systemically important financial institutions] should discourage systemically consequential growth or mergers unless the benefits to society are clearly significant.” So far, though, it’s not clear what the public benefit of a bigger Capital One might be. Recent research from the New York Times shows that Capital One has basically eliminated their small business lending in recent years. In 2006, they approved $228 million in small business loans, but by 2010 that lending had been reduced to just $600,000 nationwide. It’s by far the most dramatic drop-off in small business lending by any of the top-25 banks the Times looked at.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition is running a letter-writing campaign asking the Federal Reserve to extend the public comment period on the acquisition by 60 days and to hold public hearings in at least 5 major cities before the deal is approved or rejected. “If the Capital One acquisition is approved without substantial regulatory review, it will signal a continuation of a regulatory culture that brought us the foreclosure crisis, the financial crisis and financial institutions that were Too-Big-to-Fail and are even bigger today,” they write. They’re asking for letters to be submitted by August 22nd.

Cross-posted from Open Congress.

 
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Revolving Door Makes Lobbying Cheaper and More Effective

On June 15, 2011, In Background and Research, Congress, Corporations, By Donny Shaw

Cross-posted from Open Congress Blog.

The conclusions will probably come as a surprise exactly none of you, but a new study from the International Monetary Fund on the influence of campaign donations and lobbying politics is worth a mention because of the completeness of the research and the authority of its source. Two IMF economists, Deniz Igan and Prachi Mishra, have been examining how the targeted political activities of financial corporations between 1999 and 2006 affected how Congress voted on bills that strengthened or loosened regulation of Wall Street leading up to the 2008 crisis. They found — surprise! — that the more the corporations spent on campaign donations and lobbying, the more likely Congress was to vote in favor of deregulation. Furthermore, they found that the money Wall Street spent on lobbying members of Congress who were connected to Wall Street, either from having worked there in the past or through a former staff member who had gone through the revolving door to K Street, had a much stronger effect on their voting than on those who had no Wall Street connections.

A preliminary version of the economists’ research paper, replete with detailed methodology information, can be found here (happy to see OpenCongress mentioned as a data source). Some of their key findings were summed up recently in an article for the June edition of the IMF’s Finance & Development magazine, here. And Dan Froomkin written it up at HuffPost, here.

The most significant finding is the extent to which the revolving door influences Congress’ voting patterns. According to the study, Wall Street companies that used lobbyists who had worked for the member of Congress they were lobbying made the targeted lawmaker 20% more likely to vote how the firm wanted than the average lawmaker, and about 9% more likely than lawmakers who were lobbied by unconnected lobbyists (column 1 at right). Furthermore, when companies used lobbyists who were connected to the member of Congress they were targeting, they were able to spend less to have the same impact. The amount of money spent by companies with connected lobbyists did not affect voting (column 3). Apparently it’s just the connection that matters, not the number of trips to the Hill.

Coincidentally, Talking Points Memo has just updated their “Shadow Congress” database, tracking former members of Congress who now work for lobbying shops, and the revolving door is definitely trending up. By TPM’s count 195 former lawmakers now work on K Street — up from 172 one year ago — including several very powerful Democrats who were defeated in the 2010 midterms.

Given the influence of the revolving door, there has been very little discussion in Congress on reforming the system. In 2007, as part of a larger ethics overhaul bill, Democrats passed a loophole-laden two-year “cooling off” period before ex-lawmakers and staff members could become registered lobbyists. In the past 6 years, only one bill has been introduced to expand those restrictions. Sen. Michael Bennet’s [D, CO] “Close the Revolving Door Act of 2010” proposed, among other things, to permanently ban members of Congress from ever joining lobbying firms. It attracted one co-sponsor before dying in committee.

 
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Is There A Scam Behnd The Rise In Oil And Food Prices?

On April 19, 2011, In Corporations, free markets, By Danny Schechter

The global economy and its recovery, and the living standards of millions of plain folks, are now at risk from the sudden rise in oil and commodity prices.

Gas at the pump is up, and going higher. Food prices are following.

The consequences are catastrophic for the global poor as their costs go up while their income doesn’t. It’s menacing American workers too, who in large part have not seen a meaningful raise since the days of Reagan (keeping it this way is clearly behind the current flurry of attacks on unions).

Already, unrest in the Middle East and many African countries is being blamed for these dramatic increases. It seems as if this threat to global stability is being largely ignored in our media, one that treats the oil business as just another mystical world of free market trading.

Why is it happening? Why all the volatility? Is oil getting scarcer, leading to price increases? Is the cost of food, similarly, a reflection of naturally increasing commodity prices?

While it’s true that natural disasters and droughts play some role in this unchecked price inflation, it also seems apparent that something else is attracting increasing attention, even if most of our media fails to explore what is a political time bomb while most political leaders shrug their shoulder and ignore it.

President Obama recently said there is nothing he can do about the hike in oil and food prices.

Critics say the problem is that government and media outlets alike refuse to recognize what’s really going on: unchecked speculation!
Not everyone buys into this suspicion. In fact, it is one of more intense subjects of debate in economics. Princeton University economist Paul Krugman pooh-poohs the impact of speculation counter posing the traditional argument that oil prices are set by supply and demand.
The Economist Magazine agrees, summing up its views with a pithy phrase, “Speculation does not drive the oil price. Driving does.”
Others, like oil industry analyst Michael Klare of Hampshire College in the US see demand outdistancing supply:
“Consider the recent rise in the price of oil just a faint and early tremor heralding the oilquake to come.  Oil won’t disappear from international markets, but in the coming decades it will never reach the volumes needed to satisfy projected world demand, which means that, sooner rather than later, scarcity will become the dominant market condition.”

Usually you hear this debate in scholarly circles or read it in political tracts where orthodox views collide with more alarmist projections about the oil supply “peaking.”
But officials in the Third World don’t see the subject as academic. Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao charges “Speculative movements in commodity derivative markets are also causing volatility in prices,” he said.

The World Bank is meeting on this issue this week because it is seen as a matter of “utmost urgency.”

“The price of food is a matter of life and death for the very poorest people in the world,” said Tom Arnold, CEO of Concern Worldwide, the international humanitarian agency, ahead of his participation at The Open Forum on Food at World Bank headquarters.

He adds, “…with many families spending up to 80% of their income on basic foods to survive, even the slightest increase in price can have devastating effects and become a crises for the poorest.”

Journalist Josh Clark argues on the website “How Stuff Works” that much of the oil speculation is rooted in the financial crisis, “The next time you drive to the gas station, only to find prices are still sky high compared to just a few years ago, take notice of the rows of foreclosed houses you’ll pass along the way. They may seem like two parts of a spell of economic bad luck, but high gas prices and home foreclosures are actually very much interrelated. Before most people were even aware there was an economic crisis, investment managers abandoned failing mortgage-backed  securities and looked for other lucrative investments. What they settled on was oil futures.”

The debate within the industry is more subdued, perhaps to avoid a public fight between suppliers and distributors who don’t want to rock the boat.  But some officials like Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association, representing 8,000 retail and wholesale suppliers has spoken out.

He argues, “Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities. Not by companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies. But by investors who profit money from their speculative positions.”

Now, a prominent and popular market analyst is throwing caution to the wind by blowing the whistle on speculators.

Finance expert Phil Davis runs a website and widely read newsletter to monitor stocks and options trades. He’s a professional’s professional, whose grandfather taught him to buy stocks when he was just ten years old.

His website is Phil’s Stock World, and stocks are his world. He’s subtitled the site, “High Finance for Real People.”

He is usually a sober and calm analyst, not known as maverick or dissenter.

When I met Phil the other night, he was on fire, enraged by what he believes is the scam of the century that no one wants to talk about, because so many powerful people armed with legions of lawyers want unquestioning allegiance, and will sue you into silence.

He studies the oil/food issue carefully and has concluded,  “It’s a scam folks, it’s nothing but a huge scam and it’s destroying the US economy as well as the entire global economy but no one complains because they are ‘only’ stealing about $1.50 per gallon from each individual person in the industrialized world.”
“It’s the top 0.01% robbing the next 39.99% – the bottom 60% can’t afford cars anyway (they just starve quietly to death, as food prices climb on fuel costs).  If someone breaks into your car and steals a $500 stereo, you go to the police, but if someone charges you an extra $30 every time you fill up your tank 50 times a year ($1,500) you shut up and pay your bill. Great system, right?”

Phil is just getting started, as he delves into the intricacies of the NYMEX market that handles these trades:

“The great thing about the NYMEX is that the traders don’t have to take delivery on their contracts, they can simply pay to roll them over to the next settlement price, even if no one is actually buying the barrels. That’s how we have developed a massive glut of 677 Million barrels worth of contracts in the front four months on the NYMEX and, come rollover day – that will be the amount of barrels “on order” for the front 3 months, unless a lot barrels get dumped at market prices fast.”
“Keep in mind that the entire United States uses ‘just’ 18M barrels of oil a day, so 677M barrels is a 37-day supply of oil. But, we also make 9M barrels of our own oil and import ‘just’ 9M barrels per day, and 5M barrels of that is from Canada and Mexico who, last I heard, aren’t even having revolutions.  So, ignoring North Sea oil Brazil and Venezuela and lumping Africa in with OPEC, we are importing 3Mbd from unreliable sources and there is a 225-day supply under contract for delivery at the current price or cheaper plus we have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that holds another 727 Million barrels (full) plus 370M barrels of commercial storage in the US (also full) which is another 365.6 days of marginal oil already here in storage in addition to the 225 days under contract for delivery. “
These contracts for oil outnumber their actual delivery, a sign of speculation and market manipulation, as oil companies win government authorizations for wells but then don’t open them for exploration or exploitation. It’s all a game of manipulating oil supply to keep prices up. And no one seems to be regulating it.
What Phil sees is a giant but intricate game of market manipulation and rigging by a cartel—not just an industry—that actually has loaded tankers criss-crossing the oceans but only landing when the price is right.
“There is nothing that the conga-line of tankers between here and OPEC would like to do more than unload an extra 277 Million barrels of crude at $112.79 per barrel (Friday’s close on open contracts and price) but, unfortunately, as I mentioned last week, Cushing, Oklahoma (Where oil is stored) is already packed to the gills with oil and can only handle 45M barrels if it started out empty so it is, very simply, physically impossible for those barrels to be delivered.  This did not, however, stop 287M barrels worth of May contracts from trading on Friday and GAINING $2.49 on the day. “
He asks, “Who is buying 287,494 contracts (1,000 barrels per contract) for May delivery that can’t possibly be delivered for $2.49 more than they were priced the day before?  These are the kind of questions that you would think regulators would be asking – if we had any.”
The TV news magazine 60 Minutes spoke with Dan Gilligan who noted that, investors don’t actually take delivery of the oil. “All they do is buy the paper, and hope that they can sell it for more than they paid for it. Before they have to take delivery.”
He says they make their fortunes “on the volatility that exists in the market. They make it going up and down.”
Payam Sharifi, at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, notes that even as the rise in oil prices threatens the world economy, there is almost total silence on the danger:

“This issue ought to be discussed again with a renewed interest – but the media and much of the populace at large have simply accepted high food and oil prices as an unavoidable fact of life, without any discussion of the causes of these price rises aside from platitudes.”
What can we do about that?

News Dissector Danny Schechter made the film Plunder The Crime of Our Time (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) on the financial crisis as a crime story. He wrote an introduction to the recent reissue of a classic two-volume expose of John D. Rockefeller’s The Standard Oil Company, one of the top ten works of investigative reporting in American history.  (Cosimo Books) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

 
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Foreclosure Fraud Dam Breaking for Big Banks

On September 30, 2010, In Corporations, Current Leadership, free markets, By Tiffiniy Cheng

JP Morgan, Bank of America, 8 big lenders are also stopping foreclosures because of their possible involvement in foreclosures mills, churning out possibly fraudulent foreclosure letters to quickly foreclose on as many people as possible. Stop Foreclosure Fraud.com is a good site to follow the issue. Geithner is talking about an aid package, buying home mortgages to the tune of $100 billion. They should not go in with aid for the big banks – this would be another grave mistake on Geithner’s/Obama’s part (and fodder for calling for Geithner’s resignation).

“The Obama administration outlined a plan this week that would provide housing relief, help remove illiquid assets clogging banks’ balance sheets and spur lending. Geithner pledged to buy and modify troubled homeowner mortgages, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said the aid could be as much as $100 billion.”

Going in and saving the banks’ balance sheets will not fix our foreclosure issues, it will buy the big banks some time and further concentrate wealth in the CEO class, but the big banks will still have troubled balance sheets beneath the aid. Instead, we should allow the big banks in this fraud to collapse and fail — we can reorganize the good parts, sell them in the private market at a profit, and have a healthier banking system for it.

Please see post on what should happen to GMAC and why GMAC should really just be broken up. A housing market reset and right to rent proposals is necessary policy and much too late, but still especially expedient, effective, justified, and economically stimulative.

 
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Take GMAC out of government focus

On September 23, 2010, In Corporations, free markets, neo-capitalism, By Tiffiniy Cheng

Recent news about GMAC’s halting of foreclosure proceedings in 23 states has put the financial crisis in a helpful perspective.

There have been numerous movies, books, blogs, investigations, and articles about the fraud practiced by many of the nation’s largest financial institutions, including the specific fraud involving GMAC. But, for so long, there was nothing truly tangible that was happening to stop, reprimand, or reveal the rampant and well-documented fraud. There have been no real prosecutions, Obama has not held Wall Street accountable as he promised.

But now, that GMAC is in the process of coming clean, the financial crisis feels that much more real to me. It now feels like part of the other side is in their own way acknowledging that something happened because it did, and there is something tangible happening.

From the Washington Post, this is how much we know so far:

“GMAC, which is owned by Detroit-based Ally Financial Inc., did not identify the specific internal issue that prompted the moratorium in its statement, but it has been linked to lawsuits this year surrounding the alleged falsification of a key foreclosure document.

The Florida attorney general is investigating three law firms for allegedly providing fraudulent affidavits that identify who holds the original mortgage note in foreclosure cases. In Florida and in other states, this document allows lenders to bypass a costly trial and proceed with a foreclosure.

Two of the three firms being investigated – the Law Office of Marshall C. Watson and the Law Offices of David J. Stern PA – have represented GMAC in foreclosure proceedings. And the person who signed many of these allegedly false affidavits was an employee of GMAC.

In a deposition taken in December, GMAC employee Jeffrey Stephan said he signed 10,000 affidavits or similar documents a month without personally verifying who the mortgage holder was. That means many foreclosures could have taken place based on false documentation. Stephan could not be located for comment.”

Many homeowners did expect to flip their houses or refinance their mortgages – they were being sucked into unrealistic claims about the longevity of rising home prices. To be fair though, when our economy is overly financial services, then the best strategy for making money in the 1990′s through 2007 was to play in the housing game. That’s not their fault, that’s the fault of those in charge not seeing that a high services to manufacturing economy will eventually break.

And, what the homeowners didn’t know was that the banks had a separate scheme that compounds the rationalized culture of going into debt and taking on so much housing — the biggest banks were also peddling many unrealistic mortgages to people who could not afford them, packaging them together and selling them off in a Ponzi-like scheme to turn a profit at each turn. As late as 2007, GMAC was compounding our housing problems by pitching people on more refinancing – in a GMAC letter to homeowners, it read “”You’ve probably read about it in the newspaper or seen it on the nightly television news. Many mortgage lenders all across the country are heading for financial trouble because they have made too many questionable loans. Some lenders may even go out of business. And what will become of the people who trusted those lenders if that happens?” Then came the kicker: “Allow us to help you refinance your mortgage with the rate and term that best suits your needs.”


GMAC’s recent disclosures are late, much damage has been done. But, we should look at GMAC as a concrete example of the kind of fraud and business acumen in the home lending markets, especially during a time when our regulatory system was set up to allow big businesses to really push their luck. We’ve written about regulatory exemptions and the hidden subsidies given to the largest financial institutions in this country — the government effectively decides to help cobble a broken market together rather than setting up systems and taking steps to clearing out the parts of it that are dangerous and detrimental to society.


Instead, GMAC should be encouraged to look at how they can break themselves up into reasonable, safe parts. This has happened at Citigroup and they have seen good returns on profits. But GMAC and Citigroup should no longer exist, they will still be structured to fail — they are simply too unwieldy, with a few other banks helped to create a majority of the subprime loans out there, and because of their size will continue to be a focus for the government. That’s not what we want, we want to take them off of our plate and let them take care of themselves. But as long as they’re big, we’re going to have to think about them in particular. Shareholders with or without government help and pressure should get their commercial lending in order, take losses for the bad mortgages they own, and re-enter the market as new and orderly businesses under new management and ownership. GMAC/Ally is the 15th largest financial institution in the country, without truly cleaning them up, we’ll have a good size chunk of our economy still being cobbled together. We’ll still be scheming on the housing market.

 
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A Sustainable Economic Vision

On September 15, 2010, In Congress, Corporations, Current Leadership, free markets, freedom of expression, The Public, By Tiffiniy Cheng

Our Years Ahead

This fall there are lots of candidates without a sustainable economic vision. We need to make sure they get there – they should decide today to support these 5 policy proposals that address our immediate and future needs. Polling shows that there is wide public support for these proposals – there is no good reason they should not become law.

We have five questions we hope you, our best advocates, will ask your local candidates. Call them up, and report back your answers in the comments.

We generally support candidates that will hold the big banks accountable and prevent the reckless behavior that caused the economy to collapse and cost 8 million Americans their jobs. We vote for candidates that have a vision of a stable, growing economy populated by millions of small and medium sized businesses rather than big business speculation, regionally-based industry, healthy competition, rising wages, and one that supports innovation in industry and stability in the workforce. This may sound ambitious during a time of recession, but as history has shown, the only way out of this recession is to dream big and try big projects, in the best American tradition.

1. Full employment: Do you support Rep Conyers’ proposal of a deficit-neutral program that funds jobs with a tax and curbing of Wall Street transactions?

In a healthy economy, everyone who can work and wants to work should be able to find a job. It is highly wasteful, and bad for communities, family, and human dignity to have a 10% unemployment rate. When the economy goes through a recession, rather than spend our tax dollars that go to CEO pay, the government should invest directly in jobs – hire people to fix bridges, teach under-staffed schools, refit homes to make them energy neutral, lay train tracks, and build wind turbines. We support President Obama’s proposal to put people to work building a 21st century roads and rail system. We also support Rep. Conyers’ proposal of a deficit-neutral program that funds jobs with a tax and curbing of Wall Street transactions.

[A February 2010 Lake Research poll showed “solid pluralities, including among independents, prefer the (progressive) Democratic position on job creation and putting Americans back to work to the GOP’s (46% of Democrats)”]

2. Financial Transactions Tax: Do you support legislation sponsored by Tom Harkin and DiFazio for a financial transactions tax?

We support legislation sponsored by Tom Harkin and DiFazio that would make banks pay a tax on the casino culture of Wall Street. This is a sales tax on their sales of complicated financial instruments.  To pay for our deficit and social programs, we should make banks pay a sales tax on their sales of exotic financial instruments. Economists think even a tiny such tax (less than 1%) could bring in between $250 billion and $350 billion/year, which would help pay for new teachers, modernize millions of homes to make them more energy efficient, shrink our financial sector, and meet the tax shortfall of our cities and towns since the financial crisis.  This would help prevent another crisis by discouraging transactions that have no real value, and will help reduce the deficit. Opponents won’t support the tax because they work for Wall Street, not the people.

[A January 2010 poll showed that 81% of Americans agree with the
following strongly worded statement. “We need to rein in the greedy, reckless behavior of the big banks on Wall Street that cost millions of jobs and led to huge bailouts on our dime. This tax will put a limit on the casino culture of Wall Street that provides no real value and only exists to line the banker’s pockets. This reform will strengthen our financial system to help prevent another crisis and reduce the deficit.” ]

3. Break up the Banks: Do you support legislation that would break up the too big to fail banks?

We support legislation that would make sure no more banks get to be too big to fail and require government bailouts. Opponents want all the “Too Big to Fail” banks to continue to suck huge profits out of innocent people, receive taxpayer handouts for their dangerous risk taking, and destroy our economy. Our small and medium banks tend to serve their customers better and take on less risk. Breaking up our largest financial institutions opens up the industry to greater competition from small and medium banks, leading to better products for consumers and more small business lending. It would also help to limit the financial industry’s corruptive influence over federal policy making.

[ In a January 2010 Lake Research poll, Americans gave a 6.9 out of 10 rating (very to absolutely the most important reform) in a measurement of the importance of different reform proposals to “cap[ping] the size of banks and financial firms to prevent them from becoming so big that taxpayers would need to bail them out in a crisis”. A May 2010 Fox News poll showed that 69% of Americans favor new stricter controls and regulations on Wall Street and financial services industry, 20% oppose.  ]

The Mortgage Crisis

4. Housing Market Reset: Do you support legislation sponsored by Jeff Merkley that would make sure that the big banks do not get to make homeowners pay all the cost of the bad and deceptive deals they make. Instead, they should have to renegotiate for fair home prices?

Legislation sponsored by Jeff Merkley would make sure that the big banks do not get to make homeowners pay all the cost of the bad and deceptive deals they make. Instead, they should have to renegotiate for fair home prices. Foreclosures are bad for employment, bad for communities, bad for people, and they leave homes wasting. The banks that got the government to bail them out should have to come to the table.

[In a May 2010 CBS News poll showed that 56% of Americans think the government should help homeowners with mortgage issues.  “Americans disapprove of the government bailing out the banks and U.S. automakers, but they support help for ailing homeowners.”]

5. Right to Rent: Do you support the proposal made by economist Dean Baker that people who bought their homes for far more than they were worth should have the right to stay in their homes if they pay fair market rental value for them?

We support the proposal made by economist Dean Baker that people who bought their homes for far more than they were worth should have the right to stay in their homes if they pay fair market rental value for them. Many homeowners are under water at no fault of their own. For every homeowner helped by HAMP to avoid foreclosure, 10 were foreclosed on – this proposal keeps people in their homes but does not cost the taxpayer a dime. This would help save our communities from the blight of foreclosure, and encourage care and investment in homes, while forcing the big banks to negotiate with innocent home owners.

["Homeowners who are simply underwater would likely be able to afford market rents," says Ingrid Gould Ellen, an economist at New York University who helped current Housing and Urban Development secretary Shaun Donovan]

Please tell us what you hear in the comments.


What a Sustainable Economic Vision Looks Like

We are at a historic moment in our history. There are two completely different visions of our future economy.

The unsustainable vision is an economy dominated by a few dozen enormous corporations. Proponents believe that when big business does well, everyone else does well. This vision rewards debt-fueled growth, unproductive speculation, and overly concentrated power. We’ve already seen where that leads us–instability, crisis, unemployment over 10% in much of the country, empty homes, wasted jobs, overpacked schools, uncertainty and unhappiness and severely divided social classes.  This is our recent past, and this is our current economy. Republicans and some Democrats openly admit they plan to support loopholes that make it easier for Wall Street and big business to keep doing business as usual. They continue to gamble away our jobs, retirement funds, homes, city and state budgets, and tax dollars – and it is dangerous.

The sustainable vision is one built around fair wages and good jobs, with millions of small and medium sized businesses, regionally-based industry, healthy competition, rising wages, innovation in industry and stability in the workforce. We’ve already seen where this leads us — better, more secure jobs, great schools, creativity, community, stable lives that allow for innovation, and social mobility. This is our post-war America, where we overcame Jim Crow and created industries that spread throughout the world. We plan to take on the big banks that broke the economy and make sure they pay to rebuild our country.

A healthy economy builds on our traditional strengths as a country, where we nourish individual entrepeneurs and local investment. Small and medium businesses tend to care more for their workers, be more attentive to environmental concerns, and don’t get the same tax breaks and poltical muscle of big businesses. While big business is a threat to democracy, small business is its partner. A healthy economy values rising wages over lowering wages, and includes a high degree of local manufacturing, so that foreign prices can’t destabilize the basic market.

We should aim for a less speculative economy than the one we’ve had for 30 years – it leads to maximum employment, better jobs, an increasing living standard, more socially beneficial innovation, and a sound social and economic infrastructure. Less of our economic activity should be tied up in risk, we should be investing in humans and the infrastructure we need to lead healthy lives.

There is no question that people are suffering and looking for something to blame. Foreclosures are destroying communities, but also people’s dignity. Republicans are blaming immigrants, and the qu’aran, and democrats, but the real culprit is big banks and corporate handouts. There is plenty of money that can flow in the economy, it is just in the wrong place. We can decide to take history by the horns, and reward education instead of speculation, and small business instead of corporate takeovers.

More policy demands will be posted shortly.

 
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Oil is Job 1

On September 3, 2010, In Corporations, By Joe Costello

The IEA announced the world is going to become increasingly reliant on OPEC for oil, more accurately the Persian Gulf, as other members of OPEC will soon enough be formerly petroleum exporting countries. The WSJ writes,

The global dependency on the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries for oil will rise in the next five to 10 years as production by non-OPEC nations declines, the chief of the International Energy Agency said Friday.

“We have seen an increase in non-OPEC supplies. But in the mid-term, non-OPEC production will decline,” Nobuo Tanaka, the agency’s executive director, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference. “So, dependency on OPEC oil will increase.”

OPEC’s 12 members, who include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, account for about 40% of the global oil (production).

So, I guess a trend that’s been going on for over three decades is news. The increase in non-opec supply is almost entirely due to the global economic contraction. Here’s some better numbers, not that numbers have any relation to economic reality these days, nonetheless, the countries around the Persian Gulf have 60% of known global oil reserves — speaking of unreal numbers — while, the EU, the US, China and Japan, who conveniently enough account for 60% of the world’s economy have only 9% of the world’s remaining oil reserves, and if you cut the US out of that equation it would drop to 3%.

The entire corporate globalization experiment of the past few decades is built on the premise of cheap oil. The entire global “oil market”, increasingly unable to provide cheap oil, is built on the American military, and the American military is built on debt, which each year becomes ever more unsustainable. Now, we could go to the EU, China, and Japan and say you guys need to start kicking-in to pay for our military service, but I doubt that would go over well with anyone, no one’s going to give money without a corresponding increase in say. Or we can begin to realize that the entire corporate globalization experiment, premised on cheap oil, is at best problematic and more accurately a failure. We as a planet need to begin creating a non-oil based economy, that is, we need to truly become post-modern. But when you have an economy, politics, and culture completely addicted to oil, that’s difficult. Instead you get desperation like ethanol and biofuels, which is the equivalent of the addict selling-off the food, furniture, and soon enough the house. Getting off oil is job 1 for any sustained economic revival and that means a complete redesign of our infrastructure.

Cross-posted from Oil is Job 1.

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WHO IS TALKING ABOUT WHAT MATTERS?

On August 23, 2010, In Corporations, Current Leadership, free markets, By Danny Schechter

Aren’t job losses and foreclosures as important as a “Ground Zero Mosque” (that isn’t a mosque, hasn’t been built or even at ground zero?)

By Danny Schechter, Author of The Crime Of Our Time

We know we live in hard times that are on the verge of getting harder with 500,000 new claims for unemployment last week, a recent record.

The stock market may be over for now as fear and panic drives small investors out. Big corporations hoard stashes of cash rather then hire workers. The D-Word (depression) is back in play.

Foreclosures are up, and the Administration’s programs to stop them are down, well below their stated goals, only helping 1/6th of those promised assistance.

And here’s a statistic for you: 300,000. That’s the number of foreclosure filings every month for the past 17 months. This year, 1.9 million homes will be lost, down from 2 million last year. Is that progress? In July alone, 92, 858 homes were repossessed.

At the same time, the number of cancelled mortgage modifications exceeded the number of successful ones.  According to  MI-Implode, last month, “the number of trial modification cancellations surged to 616,839, greatly outnumbering the 421,804 active permanent modifications.”

And don’t think this is only a problem that affects the homeowners about to go homeless. The New York Times quotes Michael Feder, the chief executive of the real estate data firm Radar Logic to the effect that we are all at risk.

“My concern is that if we have another protracted housing dip, it’s going to bring the economy down,” Mr. Feder said. “If consumers don’t think their houses are worth what they were six months ago, they’re not going to go out and spend money. I’m concerned this problem isn’t being addressed.”

The larger point is that even if you believe the economy is already down, it can go lower. No one knows how to “fix it” either just as BP couldn’t plug the “leak” that, truth be told, is still oozing oil.
So what are we doing about it? Are we demanding debt relief or a moratorium on foreclosures? Are we shutting down the foreclosure factories?
Nope.

Progressives are spending time and wasting passion this August debating on an Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero, invariably responding to the provocations and agenda of adversaries. They are always on the defense, never taking the offense.
Who is beating the drum for job creation and a new economic policy? Maybe the unions, but their voice is muted and ignored in the electronic noise machine.  Marches are planned by the UAW and Rev. Jesse Jackson on August 28th in Detroit and in  Washington on 10.02.10. But the expected war of the words between Rev. Al Sharpton and Glenn Beck over the legacy of the March on Washington is expected to generate more heat.

Meanwhile, even as the Administration seems to be finding signs of a “recovery,” a parade of failures march on from the discovery that there is an oil slick the size of Manhattan in the Gulf to the persistence of frauds in finance from state pension funds in New Jersey to the case against the head of the Bank of America.
Even worse, Shorebank, one of the banks that community activists considered a national model of social responsibility has gone down in Chicago, the 104th bank to fail this year with 15 branches including some in Detroit and Cleveland. It was also active in 40 countries. In June, it reported over $2 billion in deposits. By August, it was gone.

In all, 349 US banks have disappeared since 2007.

ShoreBank promoted itself as a community development and environmental bank. It was based in Michelle Obama’s old neighborhood with the slogan “Lets Change The World.”  Now the world of Wall Street has changed the bank with a partnership of investors including American Express, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs taking over under the name “United Partnership.”

Hundreds of other banks are on the FDIC hit parade and may be next.

There were many worse casualties in banking in the past according to Barry James Dyke’s informative book, Pirates of Manhattan. He notes that ten thousand banks failed during the depression and 2,900 bit the dust in the S&L crisis. The current number may have been higher had Congress not bailed out the Banksters who used some of our money to play PacMan, gobbling up smaller institutions.

AP reported, “ShoreBank lost $39.5 million in the second quarter amid soured real estate loans. The bank had been under a so-called cease and desist order from the FDIC for more than a year, requiring it to boost its capital reserves. ShoreBank was able to raise more than $146 million in capital this spring from several big Wall Street institutions. It was unable, however, to secure federal bailout funds it sought from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.”
Republicans are “investigating” alleged Administration support for the Bank, AP explained, “Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the senior Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to a White House legal adviser asking specific questions on possible contacts between administration officials and executives of ShoreBank or potential investors.
The White House has said no administration officials met with ShoreBank concerning its rescue or requested help from financial institutions on its behalf.”
Questions raised by Republicans, of course, seek to politicize the issue when it is the FDIC ‘s deal with the big banks that needs to be probed, as Zero Hedge explains:

“As it stands, Goldman and 11 other banks are receiving a multimillion dollar gift to conduct a portfolio liquidation run-off of ShoreBank’s assets, while merely making sure existing deposits are serviced.”
(Note: the FDIC is led by a Republican. Hmm.)

Blogger Mike, “Mish” Shedlock concludes: “The FDIC’s handling of Shore Bank smells as bad as a pile of dead alewives on a Chicago beach in mid-July.
My question is: Why didn’t the Administration help shore up ShoreBank (if it could be shored up) as they did so many of the “too big to fail” banks?

Their hands-off attitude, perhaps in fear of being criticized, as they were anyway, helped doom the bank and, by extension, the idea that we could have socially responsible lending institutions.

So much for the priorities and power of Obama’s “Chicago Mafia.”

If they don’t have the guts to save a bank in their own hometown they know has meant so much to so many, is it any wonder they won’t take on the crimes on Wall Street?

Last week, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was complaining that he is being falsely identified as a “Goldman Guy,” insisting he never worked for the financial institution that was recently branded a “Giant Squid On The Face Of Humanity.”

He doesn’t seem to realize that the speculation is not based on the details of his resume but on an assessment of his track record as a toady for the pals he worked with when he ran the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

And by the way, Tim, why the hold–up on the appointment of Elizabeth Warren to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in your old institution?  Is she too smart and popular for you?
Why the fiddling while our modern Rome burns?

News Dissector Danny Schechter directed Plunder The Crime of Our Time, a DVD and a companion book, The Crime Of Our Time on the financial crisis as a crime story. Comments to: “mailto:dissector@mediachannel.org” dissector@mediachannel.org

 
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COUNTDOWN TO COLLAPSE: The Recovery is Not Recovering

On August 13, 2010, In Congress, Corporations, By Danny Schechter

From the author of The Crime Of Our Time

Financial journalist Charles Gasparino whose career trajectory took him from Newsweek to CNBC to Fox News was on with Bill O’ Reilly doing what the host of the factless Factor likes to do the most: promote Fox News.  In the course of their self-promotional banter, Gasparino let sip an unverifiable story about a meeting of top CEOs speculating about whether President Obama really is a secret Socialist.

Stories like this, invented or not, freak a White House ever eager to reassure the business world of their loyalties. That is no doubt why Robert Gibbs, the  President’s Press  Secretary took a whack at the “professional left,” a statement he later said had been “inartful” but did not withdraw.

Writing on OpEd News, Kevin Gosztola was not surprised:

“While circumstantial, the best evidence for why Gibbs would feel like uttering the aforementioned remarks is the shift of money from Wall Street to Republicans ahead of the election… The Democrats earned 57 percent of campaign contributions from securities and investment industries.

The situation compels the Obama Administration, especially White House press secretary Gibbs, to whip the left and the sections that are most listened to by voters into line not only because money from business interests needs to swing back the other way but because disappointed and disillusioned voters will likely stay home, not donate to Democratic Party campaigns, not make phone calls, and refuse to go door-to-door canvassing prior to Election Day if they do not fall in line.”

According to a preliminary analysis, the Center for Responsive Politics reports that “individuals and political action committees linked to the financial and real estate sectors swung hard to the Republicans with their giving since last year….
In March 2009, 70 percent of money from the sector went to the governing party, but by this summer, 68 percent was going to the opposition, as Democrats fought to pass some version of a financial overhaul.”
The motivation for Gibbs’ remarks may or may not be tied to signaling Wall Street but the deeper truth is that everyone, right and left alike, seem frustrated and at the same time powerless to check the continuing economic decline.

The private sector is not creating jobs. The GOP is blocking the government from doing more stimulus programs while the system seems to be unraveling. All the talk of cutting deficits by conservatives or ending tax cuts by liberals will not give the economy the boost it needs. There is a paralysis of analysis and a stalemate.

The markets were more freaked by the recent pessimism oozing from the Fed than any partisan punditry. The slowdown they are worried about has already doomed any heavily-hyped “recovery.”

And the public knows it, according to the recent polls.

What’s worse is the tea leaves offer few signs of a turnaround any time soon even if General Motors is selling more cars—many, may we be reminded,  in China. (The GM CEO who last week took a nasty ingrate smack at GM being perceived as “Government Motors,” demanding the government sell all of its shares, has just announced he is leaving!  I wonder why?)

The Carlysle Group is taking over while the automaker launches a new program of subprime lending, the very predatory dealmaking that got them in trouble in the first place.

Does anyone ever learn from history, or care about how communities are being destroyed as a financial crisis becomes a social crisis at the grass roots level?

Check out what happened at that mall in Atlanta where thousands of people nearly rioted to get on a public housing waiting list. The Congress returned from its recess to pass new monies to keep teachers teaching and cops patrolling. They did so by slashing food stamps so the unemployed and poor –some 41% of people who rely on them—will have to cut back further.

What a trade-off.

As for insuring the stability of an increasingly volatile system, will the new financial reforms make any difference?  It doesn’t look like it. The LA Times reported, “As Wall Street scrambles to find the best and most profitable way to operate under the new financial reform law, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — the firm that was expected to suffer the most under the legislation — could emerge practically unscathed…

“…we think we are well positioned to be a market leader under the new rules,” said Jack McCabe, co-head of Goldman’s derivatives clearing service business.

Richard Bove, a bank analyst at Rochdale Securities, said he had changed his view of the law’s effect on Goldman.

“I thought this company was going to be really harmed by this bill; now I’ve figured out that it’s not going to happen,” he said. “They should win big here.”

That’s Goldman’s reason to celebrate its “big win” What about the others? The truth is we will not know for a awhile, for a long while, for many, many years. So much for any sense of urgency even after former Fed Head Paul Volcker said we are running out of time.

Bloomberg News explained why,

“Many of the measures ordered by Congress and global regulators, aimed at cushioning the financial system in future crises, are years away from being implemented. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision plans to give the world’s banks until 2018 to comply with limits on how much they can borrow. Parts of the Volcker rule, a provision of the new Dodd-Frank Act that would force firms to cut stakes in in-house hedge funds and private-equity units, may not go into effect for a dozen years…

“Based on our experience of government’s ability to execute these things effectively and in a timely way, we are almost uncovered now from any future financial risk for at least another 8 or 10 years, and that’s a little scary,” said Roy Smith, finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a former banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc

Economist Nouriel Roubini, one of the first to forecast our crisis, worries that major economies in Europe are at risk and could fall. At the same time I am reading articles that contend, “The US is more bankrupt than Greece.”  Another reports the IMF saying the US is bankrupt but most Americans don’t know it.
What else don’t we know?

At the same time, the folks who brought us this crisis are still riding high, making multi-million dollar “settlements’ to cover up fraudulent practices.  In recent weeks, Goldman Sachs, Countrywide and, now, Wells Fargo have just done that in part to avoid prosecutions.

Their CEOS are going on vacation to spend their ill-gotten gains, not to jail to pay for their crimes. And the “professional left”—whatever that is supposed to be—is more pissed at Robert Gibbs blathering at that podium than the banksters maneuvering behind the scenes.

Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

Just one footnote: In this week of growing economic despair, an 81 year old senior citizen named Bernard Stone stood outside the unemployment office in Harlem with a flyer of his own making calling on President Obama to issue an executive order closing all American-owned factories outsourcing jobs. If they don’t do it, their executives should, he suggests, lose their citizenship and be deported  to the countries to which they exported American jobs.

“The hundred or so people who read my leaflet liked that part,” he told me.

News Dissector Danny Schechter directed the film “Plunder: The Crime of Out Time” to investigate the financial crisis as a crime story. (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

 
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Call-in Days to Keep The Big 3 No Bailout Reforms

On June 10, 2010, In Background and Research, Congress, Corporations, Current Leadership, The Public, By Tiffiniy Cheng

OUR CALL-IN DAYS ARE OUR LAST HOPE FOR “NO BAILOUTS REFORMS”

LATEST UPDATES: Tell us how your call went in the report back section right here, or scroll down below. We have had so many calls and so many reports back, it’s really great to watch the staffers start to get it and know we’re around. This week, our targets are Sen. Johnson, Rep. Frank, Sen. Corker, and Sen. Reed. TPM reports on the four New Dems weakening measures behind closed-doors, can you call them and report back?: Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), (202) 225-8203; Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), 202-225-3461; Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), 202-225-1510; Rep. Dennis Moore, Chair (D-KS), (202)225-2865. Rep. Frank has tried to gut provisions to reform credit rating agencies, showing where he is going with the bill… The Senate agreed to expand auditing of the Fed – 1 BIG WIN SO FAR. Our #2 reform discussed now, seems like a win.. Thank you for making the calls! (Follow on @wayfwd, FaceBook, riski)

We’re going to make sure there are no backroom deals that effectively gut the best reforms currently in the bill — we’ve launched “Call-in Days for the Big 3 No Bailouts Reforms” to put every decision maker in the spotlight for gutting or keeping the Big 3. We have 14 days until June 24 to influence the financial reform bill to be something worth passing. So, yesterday on Tuesday, today on Wednesday (6/16), and tomorrow on Thursday (6/17), please help us get enough people so it’s like we’re walking right into the backroom with them and slapping their hands if they do something bad. We’ll update our list on the slimiest and worst on financial reform. Full list below.

Sign up for a day that works for you — you just need a 5 minute chunk of time free — and we’ll make your call effortless. If you’ve already signed up and when you finish your call, add what you find out in the report back section here. As soon as we hear back from you, we’ll update who is acting the sleaziest (you can also report back at #finreg #716 on twitter).

We need to call as much as each of us can to stop government support and incentives for banks to become bigger and riskier – this is structural reform.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE LAST LEG OF FINANCIAL REFORM? The financial reform bill is going into the final stage in the legislative process this week and bought-out members of Congress are trying to stealthily remove all the provisions in it that the big banks oppose. The financial reform bill would be a pure product of lobbying and big banking if it were not for the just a handful of “No Bailout Reforms” that are still in the bill as we speak. Can you join us in making sure that conferees don’t gut the strongest provisions in the financial reform bill behind closed doors?

No-Bailout Reform #1, is Section 716, “PROHIBITION AGAINST FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS OF SWAPS ENTITIES”. Currently, the Senate financial reform bill still has language in it that will stop the biggest, most dangerous banks from getting federal bailouts for their riskiest gambling. The provision that provides for this would require banks to spin off the derivatives activities into separate entities without access to discount Fed money and FDIC guarantees. It is structural reform. This is the main provision that our conference committee members are being asked to gut by the lobbyists. 716 literally says this in its own bill text. Without this language financial companies that turned themselves into banks for the purpose of receiving bailouts under the TARP will get to stay bailout recipients in perpetuity. Without this language, the 2008 crisis will lead to a permanent situation where the government continually subsidizes derivatives trades, which were at the heart of what caused the crisis. Here’s more from Bankster.

No-Bailout Reform #2, STRONG CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS FOR BIG AND SMALL BANKS: When banks make their bets, they’re supposed to put some money down. Over the years, the largest banks received exemptions to how much, and therefore their bets got riskier. This time around, Senators Collins and Representative Speier have introduced complementary amendments in the Senate and House to make sure that the money these banks put down for their bets is real capital and is enough to keep the big banks from taking risks they can’t pay for and need to be bailed out by taxpayers. For strong capital requirements, the best of the House and Senate version need to stay. Here’s more from Rortybomb.

No-Bailout Reform #3, A NEW CONSUMER PROTECTION AGENCY: A signature reform of the Obama Administration and TARP watchdog Elizabeth Warren, an independent consumer watchdog agency can stop financial corporations from abusing consumers. “Subprime mortgages. Abusive and arbitrary rate hikes on your credit card. Payday loans. If you’re wondering who lets banks get away with this crap, there are more people at it than you think. There are no less than four federal regulators responsible for overseeing consumer protection in finance, and all of them are terrible,” writes Zach Carter. The Senate bill would house the CFPA in the Fed and allow the Fed to veto their rules proposal. That’s unacceptable. We need an independent CFPA, via the House bill, with full rule-making authority. More from HuffPo.

BIG REFORM #4: First and foremost, we’re advocates of breaking up the big banks. We fought for the Brown-Kaufman amendment to cap the size of banks before they get too big to fail, but it didn’t pass with the Senate bill. Therefore, we agree with Dr. Simon Johnson that Rep. Kanjorski’s amendment to allow regulators to break up the banks is an important part of the finreg bill and are happy to push for it. To see more reforms, see our blog post from Stephanie and Ruth.

Supporters of these measures are Nobel Laureate Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, renowned Economists Robert Reich, Jane D’Arista, Dean Baker, Simon Johnson, Jennifer Taub, David Moss, Michael Greenberger, financial writers and advocates, Rortybomb/Mike Konczal, Ilan Moscovitz of the Motley Fool, Zach Carter of CAF/Alternet, Public Citizen, CAF, David Dayen/FireDogLake, BanksterUSA, McJoan of Daily Kos. Join them!

Latest movements for the strongest reforms: Simon Johnson, Rortybomb, FireDogLake. CNBC says banks will lose on 716. Fed Chiefs support 716. NYTimes editorial.

AND NOW, WHO IS WATERING DOWN THE BILL? We have figured out who is trying to water down the bill thanks to the many people who have told us what they have heard in the comments of this post and what has been said in public.

Who of the 28+ are running the sleaziest deals (today the top 4 are Frank, Reed, Johnson, and Corker)?:

Big Bank Defenders (they would love to hear from you):
* Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) (202) 225-8203 here, here
* Rep. Spencer Bachus (R, AL) 202-225-4921 report, report
* Sen. Jack Reed (R, RI) (202) 224-4642 here, CFPA
* Rep. Dennis Moore, Chair (D, KS) 202-225-2865 blue dog, here
* Rep. Mel Watt (D, NC) 202-225-1510 bank cash, pro-CFPA, here
* Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI), (202) 225-5802 here, here
* Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) 202 224 3521 here

* Rep. Scott Garrett (R, NJ) 202-225-4465 C-SPAN, this
* Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) 202-224-6142 here
* Rep. Judy Biggert (R, IL) 202-225-3515 bad
* Rep. Gregory Meeks (D, NY) (202) 225-3461 bad, here
* Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R, TX) 202-225-3484 bad
* Rep. Edward Royce (R, CA) 202-225-4111 here, here
* Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) 202 224 3324 report, article
* Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) 202 224 5744 here, here
* Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) 202 224 3344 here

Public Defenders (so far):

* Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D, PA) (202) 225-6511 here
* Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D, AR) (202) 224-4843 gutting, reverting, report
* Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) 202-225-2165 prefers House version, maybe
* Sen. Tom Harkin (D, IA) (202) 224-3254 here
* Sen. Patrick Leahy (D, VT) (202) 224-4242 here
* Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) 202-224-5842 pro-CFPA
* Rep. Maxine Waters (D, CA) (202) 225-2201 here, here

MYSTERIOUS (they need calls ahora)

* Sen. Chris Dodd (D, CT) (202) 224-2823 report, and report, report
* Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) 202 224 6542 report, most fin cash, here
* Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D, OH) 202-225-2015 neutral
* Rep. Shelley Capito (R, WV) 202-225-2711 (against)
* Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D, NY) (202) 225-7944 unclear, here
* Rep. Barney Frank (D, MA) (202) 225-5931 no, yes, yes, here, YES

We hope that you are helping to call, join us for the next day or call right now, and further target the few people we need to reach. Then, help us finish the job — we can’t wait to hear from you so we can update our list of sleaziest deals — tell us what you hear in the comments of this post. Thanks for making it happen!

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LEARN MORE: Our Money and Economy 

BOOKS

1)Barry Lynn’s “Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, the most important book on the hidden monopolies in our country and how they impact our democracy.

2)Neil Barofsky’s “Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, the story of the mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund.

3)Lawrence Goodwyn’s “The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America,” one of the truly great works of American history and how to build a foundation for 20th century American political economy.

MELTDOWN CAUSES: Articles and Interviews

1. Finger of blame points to shadow banking’s implosion -Financial Times
2. Musings on Structural Challenges to the Financial System -Yves Smith
3. Hedge fund Manager Goodbye -Andrew Lahde
4. The End -Michael Lewis
5. Alan Greenspan and the Fed -William Greider
6. Bill Moyers and Kevin Phillips -video
7. Destructive Rise of Big Finance -Kevin Phillips
8. The Quiet Coup -Simon Johnson

"FINANCIAL INNOVATIONS"

1. Genesis of the Debt Disaster -Financial Times
2. Reforming Credit Default Swaps -Institutional Risk Analyst
3. AIG Bailout -Yves Smith
4. Mark to Model -Yves Smith

WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE BIG BANKS THAT FAIL?

1. Willem Buiter -FT
2. Thomas Hoening -Kansas City Federal Reserve
3. Joseph Stiglitz -Nobel Laureate
4. Nassim Taleb -FT
5. Dan Tarullo -Federal Reserve

ANTITRUST

1. Breaking up the Banks -Zephyr Teachout
2. Too Big to Fail is Too Big -Willem Buiter
3. Vigourous Antitrust -Christine Varney, Asst Atty General of DOJ, AT

REGULATION

1. Regulatory Capture -Thomas Frank
2. Making Regulation Work -Zephyr Taachout, Shawn Bayern

WHAT'S IT MEAN FOR THE ECONOMY?

1. Evolution or Revolution -Bill Gross
2. The Future of the American Dream -William Greider
3. Tom Geoghegan and William Greider on the Economy - audio
4. Andrew Bacevich Interview With Bill Moyers - video

 

 

 

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