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I picked up this Robert Reich quote from Politico’s Open Mic section, which echoes the sentiments expressed by a Massachusetts voter in my recent post “President Obama, are you listening?”:
A third political party is emerging in America. Call it the I’m-Mad-As-Hell party.
It’s a mistake to see the Mad-As-Hell party as just a right-wing phenomenon [...]

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CNBC’s Diana Olick has the breaking story on alleged fraud in the mortgage industry. She has been writing about this for a few days now.  See Big Banks Accused of Short Sale Fraud – Realty Check with Diana Olick at CNBC’s website.
Basically, second liens on properties like home equity loans have a blocking interest that [...]

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Reuters reporter Matthew Goldstein has this breaking story:
It could take until November 2018 to get the full story behind the U.S. bailout of insurance giant American International Group because of an action taken last year by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In May, the SEC approved a request by AIG to keep secret an exhibit to [...]

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I had originally looked to add this video to the last post on Black about the federal reserve. But the video here showing Black speaking to Bloomberg News about the recent AIG scandal and financial regulation deserves a post of its own.
The question Black asks is why haven’t we seen a more thorough investigation [...]

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This post by Bill Black originally appeared at New Deal 2.0. William K. Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is a white-collar criminologist and was a senior financial regulator. He is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. [...]

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I must be incredibly sleep-deprived because my last post overlooked a critical case in the financial blogosphere where the same issues of blogging and government coercion are at issue.
I completely forgot that the Implode-o-Meter sites are taking an enormous hit right now because of their coverage on the housing bubble. You may recall, back in [...]

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Michael Arrington, a prolific blogger in the Tech community, has written a thoughtful piece on bloggers’ right/duty to protect confidential sources in the face of government pressure to do otherwise.  I’d like to post a portion of that article here and ask you what you think of his arguments.  He says:
Last week two bloggers, Steven [...]

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Cynical? Yes. Spot on? Of course.
This is what happens when government stops trying to defend consumer interests for the benefit of business interests.

Source
‘I’m going to shop around and find a rip-off bank that works for me’ – Kipper Williams, Guardian
See also OFT gives up unfair bank charges fight and OFT drops bank account [...]

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Today is the first anniversary of Bernie Madoff’s scam of the century which defrauded investors out of tens of billions. The former fund manager and head of NASDAQ who ran the world’s largest ever financial fraud seems to be a hit in prison though.
See videos below.

Update:  these two articles touch on the same themes.

Bernie Madoff, [...]

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Last week after the Thanksgiving holidays, the Supreme Court started to hear oral arguments in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Dep’t of Environmental Protection, a case of eminent domain.  This is the biggest case since the court extended the use of eminent domain in the landmark Kelo v. City of New London case in [...]