The Obama administration has a big opportunity to get on the right side of history and finally do something about the size, complexity and riskiness of our very largest banks. It can support the bill which will shortly be introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA). While...

The people of Texas have sent their very own Cruz missile to the Senate, set to destroy any remaining vestiges of moderate Republicanism and just about certain to alienate Republican-leaning independents everywhere.

What a gift to my side! Except, although I am a lifelong Democrat, I am...

I have voted in 14 presidential elections since my first, in 1960. Each time the candidates or their surrogates have told me "this is the most important election of your lifetime."

Well, this week we will finally have the election that actually fits that description. There has never been an...

A lot of important issues have been neglected -- or avoided -- by both sides during this presidential campaign. Two recent news articles reminded me of one of them.

The first article relayed the good news that American David Wineland won the Nobel Prize for Physics. Wineland is a federal...

If you followed my speeches when I was in the U.S. Senate and my writing since then, you know I have been frustrated by how little the Securities Exchange Commission has done to keep up with changes in our financial markets. You also know how concerned I am about the...

Last week Knight Capital Markets, a brokerage firm that was responsible for over 10 percent of all trading in U.S. company stock, suffered a raft of computer glitches that executed millions of non-existent orders in less than 30 minutes. Knight lost $440 million and its stockholders took a...

The Facebook initial public offering fiasco is just the latest in a string of events that have seriously damaged the credibility of U.S. equity markets.

The exodus of retail customers from our stock markets is the most obvious and dangerous indication of this loss of credibility. Too...

Haven't we had this discussion before?

And maybe I said "I told you so" then? Forgive me. But we still haven't gotten to the point where we actually do something about federally insured big banks gambling with derivatives.

Investopedia defines a derivative:

I have spent the last 40 years of my life working in and teaching about the United States Senate. Right after then-Senator Biden and I came to Washington, he told me something I have always kept in mind when dealing with its members. "There is a reason the citizens of...

Since Japan lowered its rate last April, our corporate tax rate has been the highest in the world. There is no disagreement in Washington, believe it or not, that a 35% rate is too high.

What complicates things is that very few if any corporations actually pay...

Many of us thought that if a fair vote by shareholders on executive pay were ever allowed, a number of CEO pay proposals would be voted down. Last year, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act made such votes mandatory for publicly traded corporations.

Recently, Citigroup shareholders

There are some new gangs in our political neighborhoods called "super PACS" and they distorted the outcome in a number of states during the Republican presidential nomination campaign.

First, let's briefly review how these new super PACS came into being. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens...

Just because a volcano is dormant doesn't mean it won't erupt again. Sit on top of it, and even minor tremors are a disturbing reminder that the potential for disaster is very real.

That's how I felt when I read about the recent computer glitch that...

We've heard a lot in the past couple of years, pro and con, about escalating CEO compensation, but it seems to me at least one argument in their defense has merit. It is important to pay enough to recruit and retain the best talent available in the highly competitive global...

I've heard some surprising things from candidates during this primary season, but Mitt Romney's answer last Friday to a question about government regulation was in a league of its own. Here's what he said:

I got the chance after I lost to John McCain last time, to go...

When I was in the Senate back in 2009-2010 there were disagreements about virtually every element of Wall Street reform. But everyone, Republican or Democrat, agreed that the American taxpayer should never again have to bail out a bank because it was "too big to fail"-- so large and so...

I think of myself as an optimist. Over the years, I have seen a lot of crises resolved, as often as not by what can only be described as muddling through.

It is hard to see how the world will muddle through the Greek debt crisis....

We are beginning a new year, and the silence in Congress is still deafening. Will there ever be a debate about what should be done to deal with climate change?

Oh, you don't "believe" in it? If you do not, please, suspend that belief system for just...

This piece first appeared in the Wilmington News Journal on December 18th.

I was in London last week, visiting three grandchildren and their parents, when the United Kingdom's Financial Services Authority released a 452-page report. The grandchildren were in school; I became interested. Specifically about the causes of the...

Much of the recent media coverage and Internet chatter about financial industry reform has focused on the Occupy Wall Street movement. If we ever end up with the kind of reforms needed, that movement would certainly deserve some of the credit.

If we look back on...