Payday Lenders Pay Off the System So They Can Keep Ripping Off Borrowers
Paying a visit to payday lenders at one of their conferences.
Read more...Category Archives: Regulations and regulators
The Financial Sector is Too Big
Has the financial sector become too large, absorbing too many resources, and enhancing instabilities?
Read more...Clinton Outdoes Tsipras in Kolotoumbas with Her Reversals on TPP, Bank Regulations
The big problem with Hillary is it is hard to believe she stands for anything other than her desire to exercise power. Her latest bout of opportunism only reinforces that notion.
Read more...SEC Gives Blackstone $39 Million Wet Noodle Lashing Over Private Equity Abuses
The SEC is up to its usual kabuki, of pretending that a mere cost-of-doing business punishment for a firm that has engaged in widespread abuses amounts to a serious effort at enforcement. The gap between misconduct and SEC action is particularly striking in the case of private equity. In May 2014, former SEC examination chief […]
Read more...Privatization, Charters & High-Stakes Tests: Arne Duncan’s Education Legacy
The remaking of public education continue, and not in a good way. A Real News Network interview helps keep tab on this struggle over America’s future.
Read more...The Billion-Dollar Moldovan Bank Scam, Scottish Limited Partnerships, and the UK’s Anti-Money-Laundering Mess
The BBC follows up on the billion-dollar Moldovan bank scam, and Naked Capitalism kicks off a new series on money laundering in the UK
Read more...Fatal Fraud? More Big Dollar Settlements by For-Profit Hospices
Non-terminal patients are being routed to hospices in a form of Medicare fraud, and the results can be deadly to their health.
Read more...Michael Hudson on Parasitic Financial Capitalism
An interview with Michael Hudson on his latest book, Killing the Host, which focuses on the destruction wrought by financial capitalism.
Read more...Market Liquidity in Liquid Markets: Pitfalls and Trends
Market liquidity is all about smooth and rapid executions of large transactions. But why is it hard to keep big markets liquid? This column looks at liquidity in fixed-income markets, assesses new trends (as well as the EU’s new market instrument rules), and makes recommendations to policymakers to avoid illiquidity – a timely reminder that the social costs of illiquidity should not be underestimated.
Read more...Glencore, Commodities Traders, and Systemic Risk
Mega commodities trader Glencore and its big peers are looking wobbly. How worried should you be?
Read more...A Physician Substantially Tied to the Pharmaceutical Industry Nominated to Run the FDA
Yves here. As Roy Poses stresses, the media has underreported on the conflicts of interest at work in this FDA nomination. Be sure to read the very long list of Big Pharma names that have supported Dr. Richard Cardiff’s research and provided grants and speaking fees.
Read more...Gaius Publius: Will Senator Whitehouse Renew His Call for RICO Prosecution of Climate-Denying Companies like Exxon?
Did climate change denialists like Exxon coordinate their activities, as Big Tobacco did to foster doubt about smoking’s role in lung cancer? If so, what would it take for RICO prosecutions to occur?
Read more...VW Scandal Bad News For Diesel
The ramifications for the diesel industry as its reputation as cleaner fuel comes under scrutiny.
Read more...IBM Lobbyist Planted Question From USTR Official at a 2013 Public Hearing
A couple weeks back, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released 124 pages of emails obtained in a FOIA request, asking for any communications between officials at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and corporate lobbyists. The emails are mostly requests to set up meetings or share information between USTR leadership and representatives from either trade associations (The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Telecommunications Industry Association, Coalition of Services Industries, etc) or corporations directly (Cigna, General Electric, Liberty Mutual Insurance, MasterCard, AT&T, etc).
But Steve Stewart, Director of Market Access and Trade for IBM Governmental Programs – in other words, IBM’s in-house lobbying shop – takes this relationship-building a step further. He enlisted USTR to help him get his company’s narrative out.
Read more...SEC’s Mary Jo White Plots to Oust Effective Accounting Regulator, in Face of Escalating Criticism Over Conflicts
The evidence that SEC Chairman Mary Jo White needs to go becomes more overwhelming with every passing day.
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