Reading Time: < 1 minute This week we speak with Richard Vague—a former credit card company insider—about what will trigger the next financial meltdown.
Reading Time: < 1 minute So those wacky “Occupy” folks don’t have a clear picture of what they want? So they’re just a bunch of people who enjoy protesting? Watch this—from little Ole Occupy Santa Fe.
Reading Time: 4 minutes Let’s look a little further at what ails Obama—and us. It’s about the pretty small part of the One Percent that really calls the shots, and keeps a president from doing what he surely knows he must.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Obama’s circle of friends shrinks. But “interesting” banker Robert Wolf remains. 99 percent, meet the One Percent, and their man with the president.
Reading Time: < 1 minute Bank struggles to maintain record profits
Reading Time: 3 minutes With all the attention on crowds of ordinary people rising up and asserting themselves against corruption and self-dealing by an oligarchy, we’re missing what the oligarchs are doing right at home. Take, for example, the activities of one of our biggest banks, JPMorgan Chase. Newly released documents show that high officials of the bank knew Read More
Reading Time: 2 minutes Two large debit-card issuers have suddenly decided to clean up their acts in the face of pending legislative action against them. The bigger question is: what’s to prevent them from pulling a bait and switch, first voluntarily revising their rapacious practices and then, when the threat of legislation dies down, ramping those practices right back Read More
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Miami Herald published a long investigative piece about how Sir Allen Stanford, whose Antigua-based banking empire has been shut down as a massive fraud, was able to open a Miami branch in 1998 free from regulatory oversight, with the approval of Florida banking regulators. Stanford got his regulatory-free branch—one of his most lucrative franchises—despite Read More
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Obama Justice Department has just floated a trial balloon to see if it can drop a legal effort to force the Swiss Bank UBS to disclose the names of 52,000 rich Americans suspected of using the bank to evade US taxes. Back in February, the Justice Department sued the bank in an effort to Read More
Reading Time: 2 minutes In the New York Times, Joe Nocera argues that Obama’s steps at regulating Wall Street are tepid compared to FDR’s and are likely to leave in place some of the very mechanisms that contributed to the crisis. Read this excerpt, if not the entire piece, then my closing comment: [T]he Obama plan is little more Read More