Source: Rolling Stone The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway by Matt Taibbi December 9, 2009 Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed [...]

Source: The Daily Beast Wall Street’s big banks are playing dangerous new accounting games—and this time taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of billions. Nomi Prins uncovers a scandal in the making. by Nomi Prins December 1, 2009 Enron was the financial scandal that kicked off the decade: a giant energy trading company that appeared to be doing [...]

The wizards of Wall Street are finally admitting they were wrong. But we can’t trust that they have learned their lesson by Thomas Noyes November 17, 2009 It was a startling admission from one of the architects of the modern financial system. John Reed, who with Sandy Weill created Citigroup, said the merger was a mistake. What’s more, [...]

versión en español abajo by Robert Weissman November 12, 2009 Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the passage of the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and related legislation. It is an anniversary worth noting for what it teaches us about forestalling financial crises, the consequences of maniacal deregulation, and the out-of-control political power of the megafinancial institutions. The [...]

by Christopher Brauchli November 11, 2009 He never wants anything but what’s right and fair; only when you come to settle what’s right and fair, it’s everything that he wants and nothing that you want. – Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays It is typical of the petty that they are inflamed by the news of what they perceive [...]

por AFP October 13, 2009 WASHINGTON – US banks and securities firms could pay a record 140 billion dollars to its staff this year, a rebound in compensations that comes despite regulatory scrutiny of Wall Street pay culture, a report said Wednesday. Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can [...]

by Chris Adams October 4, 2009 WASHINGTON — The federal government is engaged in a massive mortgage modification program that’s on track to send billions in tax dollars to many of the very companies that judges or regulators have cited in recent years for abusive mortgage practices. The firms, called mortgage servicers, have been cited for badgering, manipulating [...]

by Alyssa Katz September 30, 2009 During the real estate bubble, older urban neighborhoods across the nation, from Atlanta to Baltimore to Cleveland to Sacramento and countless communities in between fell victim to a devastating plague of predatory lending and mortgage fraud. This was enabled by Wall Street’s bottomless appetite for financing home loans, lenders’ lax standards, and [...]

Target trading rules, consumer protections by Michael Kranish and Alan Wirzbicki September 27, 2009 WASHINGTON – The meeting with Bank of America executives came less than a year after American taxpayers rescued the institution with a $45 billion emergency bailout. The subject was derivatives, the complex securities that helped trigger Wall Street’s crisis and drag the country to [...]

by Katrina vanden Heuvel & Greg Kaufman September 12, 2009 In Georgia, the ease with which someone can lose a home is staggering. A foreclosure-eviction can occur without judicial review in just 35 days, and at 10 a.m. on the first Tuesday of every month, the state’s 159 counties hold a sheriff’s auction of foreclosed homes. That translated to [...]