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Today's Stories April 8, 2010 Andrew Cockburn April 7, 2010 Jonathan Cook Dean Baker Julien Mercille Julie Hilden Robert Elias Ron Jacobs Linda Greene David Macaray Joshua Brollier Randy Shields Website of the Day April 6, 2010 Mike Whitney Ralph Nader Patrick Cockburn William Blum Stephen Soldz Dave Lindorff Mark Schuller Roger Burbach Laura Flanders Charles R. Larson Website of the Day April 5, 2010 Bill Quigley Uri Avnery Saul Landau Nikolas Kozloff Xavier Monthéard Mark Weisbrot Suzan Mazur Billy Wharton Damien Millet, Sophie Perchellet and Eric Toussaint Johanna Isaacson Valuable Things: "Shutter Island" and the Radical Viewer Website of the Day April 2 - 4, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Pam Martens Afshin Rattansi Patrick Cockburn Anthony DiMaggio Ramzy Baroud Bruce E. Levine M. Shahid Alam Fractures in the Rannie Amiri Stewart J. Lawrence John Ross Adam Parsons Rev. William E. Alberts Alvaro Huerta David Ker Thomson Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Greg Moses David Rosen Laura Flanders Nikhil Aziz Alan Farago Chris Genovali, Paul Paquet and Misty MacDuffee: Missy Beattie Charles Davis David Rovics Jack D. Forbes Farzana Versey Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend April 1, 2010 Gareth Porter Daniel Kovalik Ellen Brown Emily J. Kirk / Tanya Golash-Boza David Macaray Russell Mokhiber Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day March 31, 2010 Samuel Singer Dean Baker Esam Al-Amin Gareth Porter David Rosen Mike Whitney Anita Sinha Michael P. Bradley The Dawning of a Liberal Apologetics for Iraq Nikolas Kozloff Mary Lynn Cramer Website of the Day March 30, 2010 Conn Hallinan Kathy Kelly Rafael Hernandez Russell Mokhiber Poyan Nahrvar Ralph Nader Alan Farago Anthony Papa Laura Carlsen Lawrence Reichard Website of the Day March 29, 2010 Vijay Prashad Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Mark Weisbrot Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese David Swanson Harvey Wasserman Jayne Lyn Stahl Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day March 26 - 28, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Pam Martens Mike Whitney Andrew J. Bacevich David Yearsley Anthony DiMaggio Dave Lindorff Jonathan Cook Robert Alvarez Linda Greene Ramzy Baroud Jayne Lyn Stahl David Swanson Frank Olson, Enemy Combatant: LSD, Murder and the CIA Laura Flanders Rannie Amiri Mark Schuller David Macaray Robert Jensen Boris Kagarlitsky Bouthaina Shaaban David Ker Thomson Charles R. Larson Prairie Miller Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend March 25, 2010 Jonathan Cook Dean Baker Laura Carlsen Mats Svensson Jayne Lyn Stahl Patrick Irelan Rose Ann DeMoro Christopher Brauchli Sandy Mayes Website of the Day March 24, 2010 Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Saul Landau Vijay Prashad Robert Alvarez Dave Lindorff Laura Flanders Chris Floyd Brian M. Downing Gregory Elich Rosie Wong Website of the Day March 23, 2010 Noor Elashi Carl Ginsburg Paul Craig Roberts Jonathan Cook Clancy Sigal Sonja Karkar Don Monkerud Greg Moses Shamus Cooke John V. Walsh Website of the Day March 22, 2010 Uri Avnery Craig D. Rose Mike Whitney Allan Nairn Gareth Porter Andy Worthington John Ross Gary Leupp Dan Bacher David Michael Green Dave Lindorff Charles R. Larson Website of the Day March 19 - 21, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey Blankfort Alan Nasser Dean Baker Barbara Rose Johnston Mike Whitney M. Shahid Alam Rannie Amiri Alan Farago Wajahat Ali Christopher Ketcham Technophilia, Technotyranny, Techno-infantilism David Rosen Patrick Bond Todd Gordon / Jeffery R. Webber Mark Weisbrot Norman Solomon Ramzy Baroud Martha Rosenberg The Wild Man Fawzia Afzal-Khan Laura Flanders Clare Bayard / Sarah Lazare David Ker Thomson Buy This Article: the Politics of Doing Squat Binoy Kampmark Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Ron Jacobs Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend March 18, 2010 JoAnn Wypijewski Neve Gordon David Macaray Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Winslow T. Wheeler Harvey Wasserman Missy Beattie Tolu Olorunda David Swanson Website of the Day March 17, 2010 Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whitney Anthony DiMaggio Christopher Fons Mark Weisbrot Dave Lindorff Joe Allen Carl Finamore Yifat Susskind Laura Flanders Website of the Day
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April 8, 2010 As Rahm Eyes ExitFinancial Reform Bids Collapse Into FarceBy ANDREW COCKBURN Word from the White House is that Rahm Emanuel is still fishing around for a lucrative berth in the financial industry (“money first, then the deal” he reportedly barked at a recent industry caller discussing business possibilities in the private sector) so we needn’t hold our breath too hard waiting for the administration to bring law enforcement, or even its emasculated sibling “regulation reform,” to Wall Street anytime soon. Not that the banks have ever really felt threatened, given the contemptuous ease, which I described here last December, with which they were able to gut the reform bill spawned last in the House of Representatives. The retiring and long since neutered Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has his own meek version of a financial reform program currently before the Senate, but this came pre-gutted on the issue of a Consumer Finance Protection Agency dedicated to protecting us from banker loan-sharks. Dodd’s proposed legislation consigns the putative CPFA to the bowels of the Federal Reserve, with a right of veto over any unappealing consumerist initiatives granted to a “Financial Stability Oversight Council” made up of banker-friendly regulators. Dodd’s bill does at the moment enjoin that OTC (Over the Counter) Just to remind everyone what’s at stake here, Moody’s recently reported that the big derivatives-trading banks would simply not allow their OTC trades to be forced onto exchanges, where prices would be public, because that would eat into their profits. “Exchange-based trading could improve the efficiency of the OTC market, but this would almost necessarily be done at the expense of dealers’ currently substantial profits: JPMorgan Chase, for example, has disclosed that it generated fully a third of its overall investment banking profits from OTC derivatives in 2006-2008. Such a permanent reduction in profitability would be a credit negative,” warned the credit rating agency. That there is even a discussion over whether or not to clean up the derivatives racket, not to mention all the other instances of crookedness that have brought us to the current ongoing catastrophe (one in every five Americans now unemployed or forced to work part time) is laughable. Further transmuting tragedy into farce is the spectacle of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, supposedly bent on uncovering the causes of the meltdown. Once upon a time, investigative hearings were worthwhile spectacles. The Watergate committee, after all, had its moments, while the Pecora Commission of New Deal days probing Wall Street machinations certainly made a few swindlers squirm. But the “inquiry commission” holds out no such promise. (Once they opted for “crisis” rather than “crimes” we knew it was all over.) Under the flaccid chairmanship of Pelosi crony Phil Angelides, the FCIC hearings have been built around empty exchanges. Angelides set the tone in the opening session, when he thanked the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America for their “thoughtful” written statements and then went on to ask Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein to name “the two most significant things” for which he might apologize. Try as he might, Blankfein couldn’t really think of anything very serious. Yesterday, Angelides was at it again, letting the despicable Alan Greenspan ramble, prevaricate, and mumble his way through what felt like hours of listless testimony (some of it in the dark thanks to a power failure.) Greenspan was not even seriously challenged on his assertion that the financial markets are now so complicated that any attempt at regulation is futile, as if Lehman Brothers’ crude cooking of its books via the recently exposed “Repo 105” maneuver was anything other than straightforward fraud, or the scam of packaging worthless mortgage loans into “AAA” CDO securities and selling them to pension funds was anything other than a simple confidence trick, or that tricking poor people into extortionate loans – the basis of the housing bubble – merited anything more than a speedy trial, with stiff sentences to follow. Andrew Cockburn is the co-producer of the feature documentary on the financial catastrophe American Casino. He can be reached at amcockburn@gmail.com
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