Obama Administration May Open Up Atlantic to Seismic Testing
Yves here. Another entry in the “What could go wrong?” category.
Read more...Category Archives: Regulations and regulators
We Sue CalPERS Over Denial of Our Private Equity Public Records Act Request
[Yves asked me to sticky this — lambert]
Although it’s probably sensible to expect a public agency to resist providing information in response to a Freedom of Information Act filing, the lengths to which CalPERS has gone to mislead and obfuscate in trying to thwart my efforts is quite remarkable, particularly since some of the moves CalPERS staff took are in violation of CalPERS’ own procedures.
Read more...Vermont Citizens Push to Form a State Bank, But Will Ratings Agencies Kill the Idea?
Martha R wrote to tell me that a serious effort is underway in Vermont to launch a state bank.
Read more...Quelle Surprise! Banks Are Opposed to More Liquid Markets When They Don’t Make Enough From Them
Bloomberg has an intriguing story about a bit of lobbying the big dealer banks are engaged in via a group called the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, which represents 15 out of the total of 22 primary dealers (a primary dealer, among other things, gets to bid for its own account at Treasury bond auctions). Of course, the object of their efforts is to improve their profitability, here by putting parties they regard as competitors at more of a disadvantage.
Read more...Will a $10 Minimum Wage Get All Working Americans Out of Poverty?
Yves here. This Real News Network segment discusses what many readers know all too well, that even a $10 minimum wage fails to provide an adequate standard of living, particularly for parents.
Read more...Matt Stoller: “Free Trade” Pacts Were Always About Weakening Nation-States to Promote Rule by Multinationals
Yves here. I hope those of you who are in countries being browbeaten to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will circulate this post widely.
Read more...Matt Stoller: Greta Krippner’s “Capitalizing on Crisis” Describes Real Origins of Financial Deregulation
ves here. Having lived through some of these developments, I concur with Krippner’s observation that financial deregulation was well underway prior to the Reagan era and the most important driver was interest rate volatility, which wreaked havoc with interest rate caps and other policies that made sense only if inflation stayed within a limited and not all that high range. But similar deregulatory forces were underway in the securities industry side as well.
Read more...Focus on TBTF Banks Misses How Even More Powerful Private Equity Kingpins Are Moving More into Unregulated Parts of Banking
The fact that the world’s biggest banks drove themselves off a cliff yet managed to save their hides and even profit from the exercise while leaving ordinary citizens to pick up the tab is ample reason for citizens and the small cohort of non-captured regulators and politicians focused on their continuing misdeeds.
But as a result, an even more powerful set of financial players, namely, private equity firms, is continuing to expand the scope of their activities with little scrutiny and pushback by the press and public interest groups.
Read more...Pimco, Blackrock Mulling Suing Ocwen Over Abusive Servicing
Funny what a difference a few days makes.
Read more...Governments and Activists are Fighting the Corporate “Right” to Sue Governments
This post contains several troubling examples of how investors have used provisions in existing trade deals to attack the laws of nations that attempt to enforce environmental, labor, and consumer protections, or simply discipline bad-faith behavior.
Read more...Better Markets Sues Department of Justice and Eric Holder Over JP Morgan Settlement
The public interest group Better Markets today filed suit against the Department of Justice and Eric Holder, alleging that the so-called $13 billion settlement that the Federal government entered into with the nation’s biggest bank was improper due to its secrecy and lack of third-party review.
Read more...Twitter 2, JP Morgan, 0: Bythe Masters Withdraws After One Day Appointment as CFTC Advisor
This was not a world-record revolving door stint, but the head-spinning was of the good sort for a change.
Read more...New York’s Benjamin Lawsky Rattling Banks With Currency, Servicing Probes
It’s been so long that America has had a regulator that is serious about regulating that it’s hard to remember how they operate.
Read more...Bill Black: Jamie Dimon’s $10 Million Raise is a “Common Sense” Fraud Reward
Yves here. This has been such a busy week that I’ve been remiss about commenting on how Dimon’s board rewarded him despite the London Whale fiasco and the revelation of pervasive regulatory abuses. Clearly, they thought he bought the bank’s way out of trouble on the cheap, disproving the wailing in the financial firm toadying media that the Morgan bank had been ill-treated by the Administration.
Read more...Mirabile Dictu! Post Office Bank Concept Gets Big Boost
Naked Capitalism readers have frequently called for the Post Office to offer basic banking services, as post offices long have in many countries, notably Japan. That idea has gotten an important official endorsement in the form of a detailed, extensively researched concept paper prepared by the Postal Service’s Inspector General.
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