Category Archives: Regulations and regulators

Bill Black: Obama’s Latest Betrayal in Favor of the Big Banks: TISA

Yves here. I’ve taken the liberty of editing down Bill Black’s post slightly to bring readers more quickly to his correctly outraged discussion of the latest Wikileaks expose on a trade deal that has managed to go completely under the radar: the Trade in Services Agreement, otherwise known as TISA. We wrote about this troubling news when the story broke. Astonishingly, the mainstream media has taken no notice of this release. Black’s discussion is accessible to lay readers, and I hope you’ll circulate it in the interest of raising awareness of how the Administration intends to sell out the US to banks, Big Pharma, and other multinationals.

Black explains how TISA is designed to replicate, indeed, optimize the criminogenic environment that made fraudulent financial CEOs wealthy by “looting” “their” banks.

New York Times Snipes at Neil Barofsky Yet Again

I was naive enough to think that the New York Times’ vendetta against former SIGTARP prosecutor Neil Barofsky was limited to bank propagandist Andrew Ross Sorkin and Administration mouthpiece Jackie Calmes, who penned a particularly ham-handed hit piece on Barofsky’s book Bailout.

It turns out the depth of loyalty of reporters at the New York Times is much deeper than I imagined. Ben Protess and Jessica Silver-Greenberg work hard to snigger and finger-wag at Barofsky for being about to land a plum assignment that will again make him a big bank nemesis: that of serving as monitor to miscreant Credit Suisse.

Why a Carbon Tax is Better Than Obama’s Cap and Trade

This weekend, former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson weighed in at the New York Times abouyt the need for more urgent action on the climate front, and described how various indicators of how quickly climate change is taking place, such as the speed of Arctic and Antarctic ice melt, are moving much faster than models had predicted.

Paulson, who has long been an ardent conservationist (and in contrast to his alpha Wall Street male standing, lives modestly), made a forceful pitch for carbon taxes. The irony of this proposal is that we have a Republican showing what a right-winger Obama really is.

US to Fine BNP $8+ Billion, Suspend Access to Dollar Clearing

While it is refreshing to see the authorities man up a bit in dealing with a miscreant bank, it’s also critical to recognize that the US show of spine with BNP is all about the US tightening control over international payments. In other words, the harsh settlement is all about the US projecting its power overseas via financial services. It is not a precedent for how the authorities will deal with other types of bank

The Ugly Truth About Electronic Health Records

Why, at least in the US, electronic health records are all about the looting and as a result, a danger to your health.

More Finance, More Growth? More Finance, More Crises?

Contrary to conventional wisdom in economics, a bigger role for finance, also known as “financial deepening,” has gone well beyond the point of maximum return. It is promoting more crises rather than more growth.

Wikileaks Exposes Super Secret, Regulation-Gutting Financial Services Pact

The document that Wikileaks exposed on Thursday is a portion of the financial services section. It is clearly designed to serve the pet interests of big international players. This agreement is designed to institutionalize the current level of deregulation as a baseline and facilitate the introduction of new products, further ease the movement of funds, data, and key personnel, and facilitate cross-border acquisitions and other forms of market entry.

Repeated Foreclosures on an On-Time Borrower Demonstrate Failure to Fix Servicing and Fallacy of “Save Banks at All Costs” Policy

Repeated foreclosure attempts against an on-time borrower reveal why servicing remains hopelessly broken. That also means government guaranteed mortgages are here to stay.

New Zealand: The Shell Company Incorporation Franchises: Round-Up

In a series of recent posts on shell company incorporation scams, we reanalysed the New Zealand entities incorporated by GT Group (Ian Taylor), New Zealand Company Incorporators (Michael Taylor) and The Company Net (Glenn Smith). Curiously, some modest and uncontroversial reforms have yet to be enacted.

Anat Admati Discusses the Still-Too-Big-to-Fail Banks on Bill Moyers

Anat Admati, deemed by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the US, debunks the idea that the too-big-to-fail problem has been fixed. And she takes some swipes at Timothy Geithner.

SEC Commissioner Kara Stein Declares War on SEC Chair Mary Jo White

In demanding tougher regulations, SEC commissioner Kara Stein is taking the unheard-of step of crossing swords with Mary Jo White, a chairman from the same party.

ND Ethics Law Potentially Broken on Petraeus Fracking Trip for Private Equity Kingpin KKR

Steve Horn of DeSmogBlog has done important original reporting and uncovered what could be impermissible dealings between North Dakota officials and David Petraeus, in his role as emissary for one of private equity’s best-known players, KKR.

More on CalPERS’ Sloppy Private Equity Records and Its Aggressive Stonewalling

What is CalPERS trying to hide? The pension fund sweetly professes that we should have the data we’ve asked for, but won’t provide it. It’s latest move shows how deeply it is committed to scorched-earth strategies in dealing with us.

Student Loan Servicer Corruption Rewarded, Covered For in New Round of Obama Executive Actions

It is student loan week in the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Warren’s bill to refinance prior loans to the current 3.86% rate (including private loans owned by the likes of Sallie Mae), gets a vote on Wednesday. Yesterday, the President endorsed that bill, and threw in his own executive memorandum to, as the White House puts it, “make student loans more affordable.” Today, Obama will show up on Tumblr to further make the sale.

Larry Summers’ Contradictory and Dishonest Defense of Administration’s Bank-Focused Crisis Response

Larry Summers, like Tim Geithner, wants the public to believe that rescuing banks and leaving citizens to rot was the right crisis response. But neither experts, nor people who followed the crisis, nor voters at large are buying what Team Obama is trying to sell.