Three years have passed since David (the American public) defeated Goliath (the big banks) and the Dodd-Frank Act became law. Implementation staggers forward and there have been some recent encouraging developments. But, overall, there is reason for serious concern about the fate of financial reform.
CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has often said that weak rules on regulatory jurisdiction across borders could blow a hole in the bottom of financial reform. He is right. In a recent speech on the subject, he said: “All of these common- sense reforms Congress mandated, however, could be undone if the overseas guaranteed affiliates and branches of U.S. persons are allowed to operate outside of these important requirements.”
Problem: In the 2012 election cycle, state-level candidates and parties raised more than $108 million.1 All that money sways the decisions our leaders make from what’s best for New Yorkers to what’s best for big money donors, and the lack of transparency means we can’t see when money is driving bad decisions.
Problem: Just in the last decade, 15 state-level elected officials have been convicted of corruption-related crimes. Ethics reform isn’t enough—we need to change the way elections work so that our elected officials are truly accountable to voters.
Joblessness imposes steep costs on millions of unemployed workers and their families, requiring households to continue meeting basic expenses without their former income.
This year’s holiday shopping season has started with a bang with 247 million shoppers (an all-time high and up from 226 million last year) spending an average of $423 each at local or online stores during the Thanksgiving Black Friday weekend.[4]According to the National Retail Federation, retail sales during November and December this year are expected to total $586 billion,
The share of workers without any retirement plan at work has risen dramatically over the past decade. The percentage of workers whose employer did not sponsor any type of retirement plan rose from 39 percent to 47 percent—a 21 percent increase.1 This alarming trend is a call to action for state and local policymakers who want to prevent old age hardship by ensuring all workers can invest adequately, efficiently, and safely for their own retirement. protecting funds from the volatility of the stock market.
Today’s prolonged economic slump is fundamentally different from an ordinary recession. In the aftermath of a severe financial collapse, an economy is at risk of succumbing to a prolonged deflationary undertow. With asset prices reduced, the financial system damaged, unemployment high, consumer demand depressed, and businesses reluctant to invest, the economy gets stuck well below its full employment potential.
In 2012, just 61 large donors to Super PACs giving an average of $4.7 million each matched the $285.2 million in grassroots contributions from more than 1,425,500 small donors to the major party presidential candidates.
A core value of American society is the opportunity to work hard and get ahead. Yet today in the United States, willing job-seekers are facing a new barrier to employment—credit checks. Despite the lack of evidence connecting people’s credit histories to their on-the-job performance, a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 47 percent of firms use employment credit checks.[1]
Outside spending organizations reported $1.11 billion in spending to the FEC through the final reporting deadline in the 2012 cycle. That’s already a 200% increase over total 2008 outside spending.
It seems reasonable to ask that this law, which would give the Executive Branch the power to extend its version of cost-benefit analysis to independent agencies, show that its benefits are greater than its costs. A close analysis of the proposal’s impact on the financial sector shows that it fails this test.
More than two years after the recession officially ended, 25 million Americans – 16 percent of the labor force – are still out of work or underemployed.1 There are more than four jobseekers for every job opening. 6.2 million people have been out of work for more than six months. While the economic consensus is that federal stimulus measures prevented an even greater loss of jobs and a more severe downturn,2 these actions were clearly inadequate.
Americans believe that hard work should be rewarded – people who go to work every day should not then be forced to raise their families in poverty. Yet today nearly a quarter of working adults in the U.S. are laboring at jobs that do not pay enough to support a family at a minimally acceptable level. Because their wages are so low, working people are forced to rely on public benefits, from Medicaid to food stamps to rental assistance, in order to make ends meet. Raising work standards would enable them to become more self-reliant and would raise the floor for all working people.