What’s up with economic reform? Not enough.

At Alternet, you can read Art Levine’s detailed account of legal corruption of the economic “reform.” It’s not pretty, and the good guys are losing many of the important battles. Here’s a passage, but go read the whole thing–it’s well written and critically important:

So, the sleek, blond J.P Morgan lobbyist in a smart gray suit set off by a brightly colored scarf was able to saunter in shortly before the doors opened for the hearing to see just how many more loopholes could be added. (She declined to identify herself.)

Like the evicted family in Michael Moore’s new film being hired by the bank to clean out their own home, the banking-industry lobbyists in Washington have at long last created the ultimate trickle-down effect from the bailouts: hiring the jobless ( for $11 to $35 an hour) to hold their places in line to make sure there’s no effective federal crackdown preventing more job-destroying speculation in credit default swaps and other derivatives.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth October 22, 2009 Reply

    Robert Reich discusses what king of reform we were SUPPOSED to have by now:

    Eight months ago it looked as if Wall Street was in store for strong financial regulation — oversight of derivative trading, pay linked to long-term performance, much higher capital requirements, an end to conflicts of interest (i.e. credit rating agencies being paid by the very companies whose securities they're rating), and even resurrection of the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial from investment banking. Today, Congress is struggling to produce the tiniest shards of regulation that would at least give the appearance of doing something to rein in the Street.

    What happened? Why haven't we seen meaningful reform? America's attention wandered to "balloon boy" and other idiocies, PLUS "Second, the banks keep paying off Congress."

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-wa…

  2. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth October 26, 2009 Reply

    From Robert Reich:

    And now there are five — five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called"talent," and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn't know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. Now they do.

    Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/breaki…

  3. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth November 22, 2009 Reply

    If the White House and congressional leaders get their way, the vaunted new oversight council charged with overseeing systemic risk in the financial markets will actually be a house organ of the Treasury Department, lacking the independence required to challenge decisions by government regulators, among others.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/23/systemic…

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