financial reform

Damn right America is better off than it was four years ago.

Four years ago was September 2008. George W. Bush was president and Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers was collapsing. It was a time of fear. It was a time of panic about the future. Recalling that anxiety is unsettling. But it’s important for comparison sake.

Lehman filed for bankruptcy this week four years ago – Sept. more »

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Here it comes again. This holiday weekend we'll see a lot of media coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr. But we'll hear very little about what he really was - a brave and visionary leader whose vision is as relevant today as ever.

One year ago I listed ten quotes by Dr. King, and mourned the lack of a movement that would advance his kind of vision. Then came the uprising in Madison and the Occupy movement, which began a long-overdue national debate about economic, as well as racial inequality.

Once again, Dr. King's insights provide offer insight and vision for today's movement activists - and tomorrow's.

1. "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Where Do We Go From Here? August 1967 speech.

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On Monday, Bank of America (BofA) stocks briefly traded for under $5. Yes, you could buy a share of BofA for less than the noxious debit card fee they tried to force down your throat.

BofA is massive, with assets equivalent to 15 percent of U.S. GDP. So why is it trading for the price of a latte? more »

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Janesville, WI -- As President Obama gets ready for his big jobs speech Thursday, America's nurses have a message for him. "Heal America, Tax Wall Street!" the signs read as nurses rallied in front of 61 Congressional offices recently. The nurses are proposing a bold alternative to the "cut, cut, cut" rhetoric emanating from Washington, D.C and governors across the nation. more »

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A lot of people in the media are so afraid of offending anyone that they can't even tell the truth about the man whose memorial is being unveiled this weekend in Washington. Their coverage could give you the impression that the purpose of Martin Luther King, Jr's life was simply to make everybody in this country feel good about themselves. So once again we're presenting ten quotes that represent Dr. King as he truly was -- the kind of brave and visionary leader we so badly need today.

You might be forgiven for thinking that everybody liked and admired Dr. King while he was alive except maybe for a few angry old white people down South (who later realized the errors of their ways and were very sorry.) The media have been so reluctant to convey Dr. King's true message that Glenn Beck can claim to have inherited his mantle and millions of people believe him. They're so afraid of telling his truth that a Pentagon official can claim that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the spiritual heir to Gandhi's mantle of nonviolence, would have supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Want to be a cynic? You've got plenty of material to work with, that's for sure. But if you want to be an idealist, a practical idealist who can get things done, cynicism would be a tragic mistake. Lately all I've been hearing — and, frankly, most of what I've been saying — has shed too much heat and not enough light.

Here's the cynical view of what's going on in Washington right now: This whole "debt ceiling crisis" isn't real. Choose your metaphor: It's a Wild West show for gullible rubes, a Kabuki dance, an Indonesian puppet play that's nothing more than shadows on a dirty screen ...

That last image is ideal for the cynically minded. Matchstick puppets dance before a candle or a naked lightbulb, casting images on a bedsheet to enact an ancient epic of good over evil. But they're really only pieces of wood in the hands of puppeteers, masters of illusion who use light and shadow to bring life to dead dolls and make them seem larger than they are. more »

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It's clear Elizabeth Warren is the most qualified person to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But no one is arguing otherwise. Republicans aren't saying that she isn't qualified or capable. No, the opposition to her comes from the exact opposite position: Republicans oppose Elizabeth Warren because she is too good at her job. And that has them (and the big lenders they represent) running scared.

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The post-bin Laden afterglow is fading. Those video clips of his home movies seem like scenes from a reality show, not glimpses of an Existential Threat. It's the master terrorist as an addled Ozzy Osbourne, minus the Beverly Hills couturiers and groomers. And while a few people might wait for bin Laden to sing Ozzy's "Iron Man" -- "Nobody wants him/he just stares at the world, planning his vengeance" -- our attention-deficit nation is getting ready to move on.

Significantly, while the President's overall approval rating jumped 11 percent after the killing, his economic approval fell and reached a new low: Only 34 percent approved of his handling of the economy, while 55 percent disapproved.

People were happy to see 9/11 avenged, but there's another lesson in that 11% boost, too: The public wants its President to be clear-eyed, resolute, and able to make tough decisions under pressure. We know now that the President can be (and just as importantly, can appear to be) as steely-eyed and decisive as the best of them.

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The mortgage crisis in this country doesn't get much attention in Washington these days, but it's huge. It's so huge, in fact, that it dwarfs most of the economic issues that have Washington in their grip. It's so huge that it's dragging down our entire economy. It's so huge that the numbers can be difficult to picture.

The scale of the crisis is, in a word, staggering.

Here are seven charts (and another that was borrowed from the Wall Street Journal) along with some facts and figures that will help sketch out the scope of the problem. The numbers that follow are most likely understated, if anything, because we've left out some forms of reduced spending (like that which takes place when homeowners who have paid off their mortgages lose home value.)

The budget cutters push the idea that there's a dichotomy between the heart and the brain, and that they're on the "brain" side. But the numbers don't lie: Ignoring the foreclosure crisis is both heartless and brainless.

See for yourself.

By the time you read this ...

How big is the mortgage crisis? Pick an adjective: astronomic, colossal, enormous, gigantic, ginormous, humongous, jumbo, mammoth, massive, monstrous, mastadonic, monumental, prodigious, tremendous, vast, very big, very large, whopping. Here's how big it is. Let's assume that you're reading these words one day after I wrote them. That means that:

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The bankers are endangering innocent people, their pals are roughing up the law, and the people who should be helping out are sitting on the sidelines doing nothing You can almost hear Tex Ritter singing "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin'," the theme song from High Noon.

You remember High Noon. That's the movie where Gary Cooper plays Will Kane, a retired gunslinger who can't find anybody to help him defend the town from a dangerous gang. In fact, the townspeople give him almost as much trouble as the gang does.

The financial system has its own sheriffs, and bankers behaved like an unruly mob with one of them this week. Meanwhile Democrats were characteristically diffident and Republicans formed a stone-throwing mob of their own.

Red Lights Everywhere

The lawmen - both women, in this case - were being baited, taunted, and thwarted at a time when the economy's dashboard is flashing red with warning signs. A lot of people think Wall Street banks are healthy again because it's making a lot of money. But they were making lots of money right before the last crash, too.

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