In May, Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, listed restoration of Glass-Stegall as a key Presidential candidacy criterion. Reich was in Iowa for the Raising Wages/Working Families Summit – the first of a national series – where he was the featured speaker. The reinstatement of Glass–Steagall is steadily gathering public support. A bipartisan group of senators… [Read More]
The D.O.J gets ready for the next round….lets see if the banks get away…again!
Looks as if the new U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, is taking over the so called pursuing of bank settlements along the same lines her predecessor Eric Holder did. Let’s hope that this time around the banks are held accountable and investors are finally compensated. The settlements relate to securities backed by residential mortgages that plunged… [Read More]
What Would You Do?
The room filled with almost 300 bankers plus was very quiet. The 60 Minute interview with Steve Kroft, which told about what I had experienced at Citi, had just finished playing. There was a collective sigh when the clip stopped and I asked, “What would you do?,” if you had experienced widespread fraud, corruption and… [Read More]
If you ain’t cheating…
“If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying,”’ says a Barclay Bank trader! This last week a consortium of the six biggest national and international banks were fined $5.6 billion for manipulating global currency and interest rates, going back to 2007. The six banks were Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS. All… [Read More]
The SEC Bites Like a Flea!
According to Gary Aguirre, the SEC Whistleblower, “when you’re talking to people and asking them to change their culture, you might as well be talking to a piece of granite and asking it to transform itself into a piece of sculpture.” Aguirre spoke recently at the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance at the University of Texas… [Read More]
Unfinished Business and Financial Reforms with Elizabeth Warren
In a presentation Elizabeth Warren gave at the Levy Institute’s 24th annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference, she asked: what are we to make of Dodd-Frank five years later? She asked us to go back to the Wall Street crash of 1929 and how the government responded to it. In response to the crash, our policy… [Read More]
Snowden Documentarian Academy Award Winner Glenn Greenwald Wonders Why We Put Whistle Blowers in Jail!
Glenn Greenwald, journalist, lawyer, academy award winner and author of No Place To Hide, spoke recently at a National Center for Policy Analysis luncheon I attended. His book chronicles the trip he made to Hong Kong in May of 2013 to meet with an anonymous source who claimed he had evidence of massive government spying. The… [Read More]
William Black Tells the Ugly Truth!
William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry, is a lawyer, academic, and a former bank regulator. He was formerly the litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance… [Read More]
Bloomberg Interview…It’s Time to Act!
Last week I closed my appearance on Bloomberg TV by announcing a call for an investigation by Congress into the Congressional Commission cover-ups. “So what’s the problem, Richard?” anchor Stephanie Ruhle, of Bloomberg Business asked. I countered back, “the lack of prosecutions as a result of the financial wrongdoings during the financial crisis. And the lack… [Read More]
Shooting the Messenger
It was an honor to be interviewed recently by Neil King and Samantha Early of Deutsche Welle, one of the largest broadcasters in the world. According to their website, they interact with 150 million across the world. On their weekly Worldlink program, they focus on showing the human side of top world stories. The interview was about… [Read More]
