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That top 1 percent saw its income skyrocket by 275 percent. Those between the 80th and 99th percentile--that is, the top 20 percent, excluding the very top 1 percent--also did pretty well, seeing their income rise by 65 percent. Income for the bottom 20 percent, meanwhile, grew by just 18 percent.Read the rest of this post...
Federal prosecutors are expected to file criminal charges on Wednesday against Rajat K. Gupta, the most prominent business executive ensnared in an aggressive insider trading investigation, according to people briefed on the case.Read the rest of this post...
The case against Mr. Gupta, 62, who is expected to surrender to the authorities on Wednesday, would extend the reach of the government’s inquiry into America’s most prestigious corporate boardrooms. Most of the defendants charged with insider trading over the last two years have plied their trade exclusively on Wall Street.
The charges would also mean a stunning fall from grace of a trusted adviser to political leaders and chief executives of the world’s most celebrated companies.
On Wednesday, West Virginia received a key clue. The New York Times' Pete Thamel reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had lobbied officials at two Big 12 schools on behalf of his alma mater, the University of Louisville, which also is vying for a spot in the conference.Read the rest of this post...
According to the Times, McConnell spoke to David Boren, a former Democratic senator from Oklahoma who is now president of the University of Oklahoma, and Kent Hance, a former Democratic representative from Texas who is now chancellor at Texas Tech. The conversations "played a role in raising Louisville's fortunes" in the conference re-alignment fight, Thamel wrote.
Boren and McConnell, who had previously insisted Congress shouldn't intervene in the college football drama, declined to comment, but Hance confirmed the conversations took place.
One embassy official told me that the nickname people use for the country is the “Federal Reserve of Oil”. This is because, like the Fed which controls the marginal supply of the critical resource known as dollars, the Saudis control the marginal supply of that critical resource known as oil. As such, many people come to Saudis asking for them to fund their projects, off-book. Think Charlie Wilson’s War, when the Saudis bought weapons for the Taliban to fight the Soviets more than 25 years ago, at the behest of an American Congressman.Stoller focuses broadly on the system that holds this in place, the system that the Occupy Movement seems to be opposing:
We saw this during the financial crisis, when the Federal Reserve essentially financed trillions of dollars of bailouts in collaboration with the executive branch. The Fed took a quasi-fiscal role, leading former central bankers like Willem Buiter to basically say, paraphrased, that these actions were flat-out unconstitutional. It is Congress that appropriates money, not the executive branch. But there are many routes to funding off-books operations. The CIA and the national security state are largely shielded from Congressional overview. ... This is the system we are trying to fight. It is a system guarded by PR, by rivers of political money, and by profound policy biases in favor of our reliance on oil.That analysis is well worth your attention.
Barack Obama was not in office for more than a couple of minutes, it seemed, before conservatives began trying to cover him in muck. Yet for almost three years, the administration has been scandal-less, not scandalous. In a capital culture that over generations has become practiced at the art of flinging mud pies, Republicans and a few reporters have been tossing charges against a Teflon wall.One explanation Alter does not consider but probably should is that Bush set the bar to corruption and scandal so high that none of his successors are likely to match it for some time. The real scandal of the Obama administration is that he has not moved fast enough to dismantle the GOP system of torture, imprisonment without trial and summary executions. In some cases not moving at all. But don't expect any of that to be considered a 'scandal' when the GOP is complaining he hasn't tortured enough people. Read the rest of this post...
What better way for Obama to distinguish himself from Romney than to condemn Wall Street’s antics since the bailout, and call for real reform?From Wikipedia:
Economically it would be smart for Obama to go after the Street right now because the Street’s lobbying muscle has reduced the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to a pale reflection of its former self. Dodd-Frank is rife with so many loopholes and exemptions that the largest Wall Street banks – larger by far then they were before the bailout – are back to many of their old tricks.
It’s impossible to know, for example, the exposure of the Street to European banks in danger of going under. To stay afloat, Europe’s banks will be forced to sell mountains of assets – among them, derivatives originating on the Street – and may have to reneg on or delay some repayments on loans from Wall Street banks.
The repeal of provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act effectively removed the separation that previously existed between investment banking which issued securities and commercial banks which accepted deposits. The deregulation also removed conflict of interest prohibitions between investment bankers serving as officers of commercial banks.More from HuffPost:
The footage of him speaking on the Senate floor has become something of a cult flick for the particularly wonky progressive. The date was November 4, 1999. Senator Byron Dorgan, in a patterned red tie, sharp dark suit and hair with slightly more color than it has today, was captured only by the cameras of CSPAN2.
"I want to sound a warning call today about this legislation," he declared, swaying ever so slightly right, then left, occasionally punching the air in front of him with a slightly closed fist. "I think this legislation is just fundamentally terrible."
Ten years later, Dorgan has been vindicated. His warning that banks would become "too big to fail" has proven basically true in the wake of the current financial crisis. He seems eerily prescient for claiming then that Congress would "look back ten years time and say we should not have done this." But he wasn't entirely alone. Sens. Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulski, Richard Shelby, Tom Harkin and Richard Bryan also cast nay votes.Read the rest of this post...
As did Sen. Russ Feingold, who, in a statement from his office, recalled that "Gramm-Leach-Bliley was just one of several bad policies that helped lead to the credit market crisis and the severe recession it helped cause."
The late Sen. Paul Wellstone also opposed the bill, warning at the time that Congress was "about to repeal the economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place."
After the first heavy-handed police crackdown on demonstrators in Oakland, Mayor Jean Quan wrote a statement on her Facebook page praising police for closing down the Occupy Oakland protest encampment. Now, facing anger from across the world, Quan is backing down on her aggressive language and even says that she supports the goals of the movement. She is committing to minimize police presence in the plaza and “build a community effort to improve communications and dialogue with the demonstrators.”From Mayor Quan's statement:
We support the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement: we have high levels of unemployment and we have high levels of foreclosure that makes Oakland part of the 99% too. We are a progressive city and tolerant of many opinions. We may not always agree, but we all have a right to be heard.About the police, she adds (my emphasis):
I want to thank everyone for the peaceful demonstration at Frank Ogawa Park tonight, and thank the city employees who worked hard to clean up the plaza so that all activities can continue including Occupy Wall Street. We have decided to have a minimal police presence at the plaza for the short term and build a community effort to improve communications and dialogue with the demonstrators.
99% of our officers stayed professional during difficult and dangerous circumstances as did some of the demonstrators who dissuaded other protestors from vandalizing downtown and for helping to keep the demonstrations peaceful. For the most part, demonstrations over the past two weeks have been peaceful.Can you say "false equivalency"? Me too. And I'll let you judge that "99%" number for yourself.
Obama’s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush’s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg.Read the rest of this post...
The number of significant federal rules, defined as those costing more than $100 million, has gone up under Obama, with 129 approved so far, compared with 90 for Bush, 115 for President Bill Clinton and 127 for the first President Bush over the same period in their first terms. In part that’s because $100 million in past years was worth more than it is now due to inflation, Livermore said.
In the last 12 months through the end of September, the cost range of new regulations is estimated to be $8 billion to $9 billion, a decrease from 2010, according to non-partisan Government Accountability Office reports analyzed by Bloomberg. That total put the average annual cost of regulations under Obama at about $7 billion to $11 billion, compared with the $6.9 billion average from 1981 through 2008 in current dollars, according to the OMB data.
US economic growth increased at its fastest in a year in the third quarter as consumers and businesses set aside fears about the recovery and stepped up spending, creating momentum that could carry into the final three months of the year.NOTE FROM JOHN: GDP needs to rise more than 2% in order to take a bite out of unemployment. Some say 2.5% or even 3% is necessary. As Krugman explains, this is because more people are entering the labor market as our population grows (so we need more jobs for them just to break even, or the UE rate will increase) and productivity keeps increasing, so employers can do the same work with fewer employees. In the current case, people are saying that the 2.5% growth isn't enough to decrease unemployment. Read the rest of this post...
At the same time, slightly fewer people sought unemployment benefits last week, though level remains elevated above 400,000.
Though part of the increase came from the reversal of temporary factors that had restrained growth, the expansion was a welcome relief for an economy that looked on the brink of recession just weeks ago.
The Democratic plan proposes cutting the deficit by $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion and calls for between $200 billion and $300 billion in new stimulus spending to boost an ailing U.S. economy. It would be paid for with lower interest payments from reducing deficits.NOTE FROM JOHN: Senate Democrats apparently want to lose next year. Read the rest of this post...
It also seeks around $400 billion in Medicare savings, with half coming in benefit cuts and the other half in cuts to healthcare providers. Details of that proposal were scant but tackling the popular Medicare program is always politically risky for politicians in Washington.
Many Democrats oppose cuts to Medicare, while Republicans have consistently fought tooth-and-nail against any tax hikes. The congressional aides were not immediately able to say how the Democrat plan would achieve the revenue increases.
In Atlanta, [Mayor] Reed said the last straw came Tuesday, when he said a man with an AK-47 assault rifle joined the protesters in Woodruff Park. On Wednesday, after all protesters who had been arrested were released on bond, some said the man with the assault rifle — who was carrying it legally under Georgia law — was not part of their group and should not have been a factor in shutting them down. “We don’t even know that guy,” said Candi Cunard, 26.I don't think anyone should be permitted to bring a gun to a political protest - or walk around in public brandishing one, period - but it is interesting that conservatives were permitted to bring guns to Obama rallies, with impunity, but now when a gun is supposedly reported at a liberal protest, that's the final straw for the authorities. Read the rest of this post...
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