News Headline

washingtonpost.com — Wall Street ties complicate the politically touchy search for economic adviser

By Peter Wallsten and Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 2, 2011; 7:32 PM

President Obama is expected to name a new chief economic adviser as early as this week, but the months-long search process has proven difficult and politically touchy......

And even some in the administration have suggested appointing a person with a business pedigree rather than a background primarily in academia or government....

"It's a big concern when there are these high-level advisers who have been marinated in the industry," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future.

....
The criticism from the left reflects a broader tension between Obama and liberals over his economic agenda and the makeup of his policy team.

Summers, the former president of Harvard University, received about $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the year before he entered government, and he also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions.

Some liberals had hoped the financial regulation bill that passed last year would have done more to curtail the size and power of large banks and put more severe limits on their activities, such as operating hedge funds.

Read Full Article »

usatoday.com — President Obama named William Daley as his new chief of staff.

"It would be nice if one of these appointments didn't have a Wall Street connection," says Roger Hickey of the liberal group Campaign for America's Future.

Read Full Article »

washingtonpost.com — The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which was widely reviled as a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street titans, is now expected to cost the federal government a mere $25 billion - the equivalent of less than six months of emergency jobless benefits.

A new report released Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the cost of TARP has plummeted since its passage in October 2008, when policymakers thought that the world stood on the brink of an economic meltdown.

Read Full Article »

wonkroom.thinkprogress.org — Since the foreclosure fraud scandal — in which banks were caught allowing “robo-signers” to approve potentially fraudulent foreclosure forms — first hit the national airwaves, Wall Street banks have been trying to downplay the extent of the problem, claiming that it only has to do with paperwork mistakes and not a compete disregard for due process and property rights. Wells Fargo and Citigroup both refused to implement foreclosure moratoriums despite their associations with robo-signers, and Bank of America and Ally Financial have both lifted their respective moratoriums.

Epitomizing the banks’ attempt to turn this into a story about mistaken paperwork — and not one about improperly throwing people out of their homes — Bank of America has come forth with an admission that it made “some mistakes” in its foreclosure process, but insists that they are “relatively minor”

Read Full Article »

online.wsj.com — A proposal to build the world's biggest solar-thermal power plant in the Southern California desert got the go-ahead Monday from the Obama administration, which used the announcement to bolster its message that renewable energy creates jobs. The $6 billion project is being developed by Solar Trust of America, a joint venture between Germany's Solar Millennium AG and privately held Ferrostaal AG on 7,025 acres of federally owned land near Blythe, Calif. The approval clears the way for the developers to seek federal grants and loan guarantees.

Read Full Article »

politico.com — The Obama administration will propose the first-ever greenhouse gas emission limits for heavy trucks and buses next week.

The proposal will call for a 20 percent reduction in heat-trapping emissions from trucks’ tailpipes, according to Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign.

Read Full Article »

thenation.com — To avoid angering the public and their investors, some corporate interests are going to great lengths to hide their political spending. These companies have dumped money into nonprofits and trade associations that often have innocuous names like Americans for Job Security or Revere America, but in reality serve to shield donors from accountability for their spending in our elections. This activity was greatly enhanced by the Supreme Court's now infamous Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates for unlimited and anonymous corporate spending in our elections

Read Full Article »

washingtonpost.com — I'm cautious about the conventional wisdom that the Democratic Party is about to get flattened by a Republican steamroller. Pollsters are less certain than they'd like you to believe about who's a "likely voter" and who isn't. It's easy to imagine how Democrats, facing near-unanimous predictions of a wipeout, could bestir themselves to narrow the enthusiasm gap by just enough to turn a potential "wave" election into a regular midterm setback for the party in power.

Read Full Article »

nytimes.com — A federal judge said Monday that he would rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the new health care law, as lawyers for the Obama administration and the Commonwealth of Virginia debated whether the entire 2,700-page act should be invalidated if a key provision is struck down.

Read Full Article »

politico.com — After weeks of avoiding the health care overhaul on the campaign trail, some Democrats are out bragging about the law in the final run-up to the mid-term elections.

An ad for Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) says that she “led the fight to stop” insurance companies. Rep. Scott Murphy’s (D-N.Y.) as warns that his opponent “would let insurance companies go back to denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.”

For weeks, the only Democrats talking about the overhaul in television spots were the moderates who voted against the bill.

Read Full Article »