Wall Street Is More of a Threat to Obama's Domestic Agenda than Afghanistan
Whatever Obama decides to do in Afghanistan is of little consequence compared to Wall Street's ongoing "plutonomy."
Whatever Obama decides to do in Afghanistan is of little consequence compared to Wall Street's ongoing "plutonomy."
America is becoming an angry nation, with diminished faith in its institutions. There is a growing sense among all but the wealthiest Americans that "the game is rigged" against them.
In the 1930s, people wanted to know why Wall Street crashed; what brought on the Depression; why the banks collapsed; and why they were out of a job. So Congress launched a formal inquiry.
Before Pompeii was wiped out by a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D., there were warning signs galore. But they were ignored. There is currently plenty of alarming smoke pouring out of our economic Vesuvius. It too is being ignored. READ MORE States Forced to Cut Services to the Bone: The Opportunity Cost of the Bank Bailout Reading about the huge budget cuts almost every state in the country is being forced to make leaves us pondering the opportunity cost of the bank bailout -- what else we could have done with the trillions we spent. The devastation is in the details... READ MORE TiVo Alert: I will be part of Sunday's roundtable panel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, along with Paul Krugman, George Will, Donna Brazile, and David Brooks. The show airs at different times around the country, so check your local listings.
The ghost of Pecora -- and indeed, of FDR himself -- can be sensed in D.C. this week as Congress announces a new, modern-day version of what came to be known as the "Pecora Commission."
Congressional leaders are expected to announce the creation of a new commission to investigate the real causes of America's crippling financial disaster.
Reverend Marcia Dyson, a Roosevelt Institute Braintruster, outlines the principles that must guide the inquiry into the financial collapse. "There i...
Back in the 1930s, the Great Depression that followed the 1929 market crash had direct political repercussions. In the 1930 mid-term elections, the De...
A commission like the new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission can be unwieldy and political. It cannot be non-partisan, it cannot be unified, and it is extremely difficult to make it effective.
As California's IOUs signal desperation, Roosevelt Braintruster Marshall Auerback suggests that a Pecora-style Commission could help the public recognize the folly of past economic dogmas.
Are suppositions about the complexity of the financial crisis just another way of keeping the real story from public scrutiny? If there's one thing t...
The only way to to rigorously address the issues in the broken finance system is through a Congressional investigation, since the Obama administration has called for no public accounting.
The time has come to investigate the nature, origins, propagation and effects of the financial crisis.
The Pecora investigations provided the factual basis that the financial system and political allies were corrupt. They did not divide the nation or divert its response to the economic crisis.
A strong commission with subpoena powers and a serious mandate from Congress could really dig into the dirty deeds that Wall St. traders purposed that caused this crash.
For the new Pecora Commission, Pelosi and Reid need to do better than finding a predictable list of retired and safe Democratic politicians. This is a rare chance to light a real fire on behalf of deep reform.
Reid and Pelosi have a significant stake in creating a hard-hitting Financial Crisis commission. Politically, Democrats need to hold the Wall Street barons accountable, not just bail them out.
In 1932 through 1934 the Senate Banking Committee, led by its Chief Counsel Ferdinand Pecora, ferreted out the deeper fraud and corruption that led to the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The Pecora Committee's findings helped change the political mood, and laid the groundwork for the sweeping financial reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal. President Obama has now signed legislation which, among other things, creates an investigative commission inspired by Pecora. The new Financial Markets Commission has a sweeping mandate, including subpoena powers, to investigate all the causes of the collapse. But whether the commission carries out this mandate will depend entirely on who its chair and members are, and whether they hire a tough staff.
Are any of these reforms really about change, or are they just restoring a flawed and failed system?
With Summers, Geithner, and Bernanke working closely with major investment bankers to restart the system of securitization, there will be a titanic struggle over what kind of regulatory system to have going forward.
We want to know what happened. We want those responsible to be held accountable and we want to make certain it can't happen again. Will Congress step up?
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House braced for a tough sell...
I know you've been on tenterhooks waiting for the winners of...