Media

After years of scandals and abuses, it's hard to be surprised by the criminal behavior of major banks. Typically, though, exposes of bank wrongdoing have focused on their financial shenanigans.

But yesterday, thanks to the dogged work of Senate investigators, we learned that the criminality of some banks goes much deeper, with these institutions servicing drug traffickers and terrorist-linked entities, and circumventing U.S. laws governing ties with rogue states like Iran, Sudan, and North Korea.

All to boost the bottom line.

At a campaign stop in Ohio yesterday, President Obama said the following:

True or false: A sizeable slice of congressional Republicans would vote for revenue increases, if packaged the right way.

How to value the economic role that natural resources play and incorporate some of these external costs so that not only are we aware of the impacts, we can begin to start incorporate them into pricing. 

The Supreme Court issued a little-noticed decision in a Maryland case that gave the green light to states to eliminate the repugnant practice of “prison-based gerrymandering.”

Yesterday, Wells Fargo was slapped with $175 million fine for systematically steering minority homeowners into higher interest loans -- and, indeed, providing financial incentives for brokers to stick borrowers with the highest rates they could. Abhorrent behavior.

An essential element of the American Dream is ensuring that each generation has greater opportunities than the last. What, then, do we make of a generation that can earn more than their parents, but still can't seem to climb the economic ladder?

Every day brings more reminders of the terrible unfairness that besets our country, the tragic reversal of fortune experienced by millions who once had good lives and steady jobs, now gone.

An article in the current issue of Rolling Stone chronicles “The Fallen: The  Sharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class” and describes a handful of middle-class men and women made homeless, forced to live out of their cars in church parking lots in Southern California.

Nearly every week comes more evidence that the culture of the financial sector hasn't changed much since the crisis of 2008. Greed remains the norm, along with lax ethics.