Chris Dodd’s Race to the Bottom
Flickr/David Berkowitz Cross-posted from Mother Jones.com In just six months, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the stately front man of the Senate’s campaign to crack down on Wall Street, has transformed from financial-reform avenger, scourge of the Federal Reserve, and ally of the average consumer to a GOP pushover. Last fall, the veteran Senator and chairman of the banking committee opened financial reform talks as if shot out of a cannon: He rallied around an independent consumer-protection... Read More
Blind Ben and the Fed
Cross-posted with MotherJones.com In his column today, the New York Times’ David Leonhardt takes to task the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Ben Bernanke, for not acknowledging that they inexplicably missed the housing bubble, and questions the Fed’s ability to spot future bubbles. In the wake of Bernanke’s speech this weekend in which he deflected blame for the crisis and instead pointed to lax regulation as the culprit, Leonhardt rightly notes, as many others... Read More
