The banks have systematically figured out how to rip off the government,” Lerner says.
Part of that ripoff was the LIBOR scandal, which had a “massive consequence on everything,” according to Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs employee and current senior fellow at nonpartisan think tank Demos.
The IRS is under siege for investigating conservative political groups applying for tax-exempt status. But the real problem wasn’t that the IRS was too aggressive.
New rules to regulate derivatives, adopted last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are a victory for Wall Street and a setback for financial reform. They may also signal worse things to come.
As the capital is engulfed in scandals, advocates of campaign finance reform are intensifying their pressure on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, urging him to persuade the Legislature to rewrite state elections law in the hope that change in New York could have an influence nationally.
For lawmakers in Washington, the daily chase for money can begin with a breakfast fundraiser in the side room of a Washington restaurant.
At noon, there might be a $500-per-plate lunch with lobbyists in a Capitol Hill town house. The day might wrap up in an arena sky box in downtown Washington, watching a basketball game with donors.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo spent his career cultivating the image of a man who gets what he wants. In 2011, he rammed same-sex marriage legislation through the legislature, even with a Republican-controlled Senate. In 2012, when he wanted New York to be the first state to pass gun-control laws after the Newtown shooting, he was similarly productive. This year, Cuomo has said he wants to make state elections fairer, by lowering contribution limits and supplementing small donations with public dollars to give them more weight.
Regulators in the United Kingdom are looking into allegations that traders from some of the world's largest banks have been manipulating benchmark foreign-exchange rates to make profits on the backs of clients.
Bloomberg News broke the story earlier this week, citing interviews with several anonymous traders who claim the practice has been occurring for at least 10 years. [...]
We have learned, painfully, of the damage derivatives can do to an economy in a financial crisis. But derivatives are hurting the economy even on its best days, according to a new study.
In a 2011 speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, civil rights hero and Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) eloquently described attacks across the country on Americans' access to the ballot box: "Voting rights are under attack in America.
Without a doubt, the big banks should be broken up; the need is even more urgent than it was in 2007 or 2008. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas – hardly an Occupy Wall Street affiliate – titled its 2011 Annual Report "Choosing the Road to Prosperity: Why We Must End Too Big to Fail – Now."
Financial markets, now heavily dependent on technology, need to be safeguarded against cyberattacks, natural disasters and the more prosaic scourge of human error that can cause massive disruptions, according to experts and a federal panel.
Picking a new chairman of the Federal Reserve may be the most important nomination a president can make. The next Fed chair will play an instrumental role in determining the future trajectory of America’s straggling recovery, and determining how financial regulation gets implemented.
The next big campaign finance case to go before the Supreme Court began in February 2012 in the grand ballroom at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel during the "Ronald Reagan Banquet" at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
President Obama met with the nation’s top financial regulators last week, to urge for rulings associated with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law passed more than three years ago. It was the first time the president convened a sit down with each regulator since 2011.
According to a White House statement, Obama “stressed the need to expeditiously finish implementing the critical remaining portions of Wall Street Reform to ensure we are able to prevent the type of financial harm that lead to the Great Recession from ever happening again.” [...]
After a marathon hearing that wrapped up in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the City Council of Richmond, Calif., voted to allow the use of eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages, becoming the first city in the nation to take such a concrete step toward the novel and risky strategy for helping people avoid foreclosure.
Blythe Masters is the most recognizable woman on Wall Street—and arguably its most resilient. At 44, she heads the largest commodities trading operation at the largest bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase (JPM). In the mid-1990s she developed and marketed credit derivatives, which rapidly became a new wonder of high finance.
Why are social justice organizations up in arms about an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case involving political contribution limits? It might have something to do with America's widening income inequality, which in many ways is being financed by wealthy campaign donors. A ruling in favor of lifting limits on the amount individuals can contribute would allow the wealthiest of the wealthy to control parties in ways that would make the Great Gatsby proud.
Progressive groups are warning that the Supreme Court may be on the verge of allowing federal candidates to collect multi-million dollar checks from donors.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, attorneys and representatives from the campaign finance watchdog groups Democracy, Public Citizen and Demos all raised the specter of candidates hosting $1 million-a-plate fundraisers in the near future if the Supreme Court strikes down a key provision of campaign finance law.