According to Merrill Matthews; Senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Innovation, “We do not think a U.S. recession is imminent, but the threat is very real; the caution flags are waving. Nor do we think recessions are inevitable. Rather, they are almost always the result of misguided policies — sometimes exacerbated by the Federal Reserve Bank,… [Read More]
The Whistleblower Newsroom; Is This a Conspiracy?
This last week I had the honor of being interviewed for The Whistleblower Newsroom, a podcast by whistleblowers, for whistleblowers, developed and hosted by journalists Celia Farber, TruthBarrier.com, and Kristina Borjesson. Although I had visited with Ms. Borjesson several times on the phone over the last three years, we first met last November at the… [Read More]
Richard Bowen on WRVO, Syracuse University
In November I had the honor of visiting Syracuse University for the Robert Shetterly and the Americans Who Tell the Truth: Models of Courageous Citizenship portraits celebration. This was following the Washington, D.C. unveiling of five portraits of people honored as whistleblowers by the Government Accountability Project (GAP) where I was honored to be one of them. The week… [Read More]
Crapo Spin: Too Big to Fail … Too Small to Succeed
Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, spearheaded a major rollback of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act: The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. The Crapo Bill was a recent topic of hot debate which had passed in the Senate, has now passed unchanged in the House, and has morphed into the Bank Lobbyist… [Read More]
The Fannie and Freddie Credit Merry-Go-Round
Remember the merry-go-round we rode when we were kids? You went round and round and tried to catch the prize, a brass ring. If you didn’t catch the brass ring – you wanted to get down but the merry-go-round kept going. Fannie and Freddie remind me of that merry-go-round as once again they appear to… [Read More]
Were Bank Settlements Really Payments of Extortion to the Department of Justice??
Congratulations are in order to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has managed to bring a case to trial against Nomura Holdings and the Royal Bank of Scotland, two foreign banks with little U.S. reputational risk. This relatively obscure agency oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Considering they have nowhere near the power of our federal regulators and prosecutors at our… [Read More]
Senator Warren: Enough is Enough with “Too Big To Fail” Citigroup
Kudos to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for ripping Citigroup apart last week in her challenge to Congress and exposing Wall Street’s continued unethical activities. Senator Warren vehemently objected to a little-known provision written by Citigroup and inserted in the year end funding bill that would undo a new financial regulation and allow Wall Street to… [Read More]