Banking/Finance

George H. W. Bush pooh-poohed “the vision thing.” Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have a presidential campaign without it. True, the Vermont senator is not known for his grasp of policy minutiae, to which Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas says, in effect, so what? Kos implied that Sanders has caught a lot more flak for his vague answers than Republicans do when they routinely “promis[e] …

Kevin Drum thinks he understands Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to release the transcripts of her Goldman Sachs speeches, and it has more to do with attacks she might face during the fall campaign than it does with Bernie Sanders. Drum believes it’s “vanishingly unlikely” that the speeches include “something genuinely damning,” but noted in a Saturday post that “when you give speeches to any…

Hillary and Bernie love to go after “the banks.”  But the real scoundrel of the two on this subject?  Without doubt it’s Hillary and her banking scam.

It's so predictable. Whenever a government or leader follows the left's playbook and the results "uexpectedly" don't turn out to be anywhere near what was desired, it isn't the policies' or the leader's fault. No-no-no. During the Mayor David Dinkins era in New York City, it was because Gotham had become ungovernable by any human being – until Rudy Giuliani took over. During the Carter Era, the…

Score another blow for (allegedly) "unintended consequences." A proposed 33-page rule applying to investment advisers emanating from the Department of Labor would redefine the fiduciary relationship between investment advisers and their clients investing for retirement, which is the predominant objective of most investors. According to the Wall Street Journal, the rule "could be released as soon…

As Bernie Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver appeared as a guest on Wednesday's New Day, CNN co-host Chris Cuomo referred to criticisms of Hillary Clinton as a "hate parade" as he pressed Weaver on whether it was "fair" for his campaign to add to a "drip, drip, drip" of attacks on Clinton by calling for her to release transcripts of her paid speeches.

Yesterday, Politico reported that in a Wall Street speech, Hillary sounded more like "a Goldman Sachs managing director." Today, Bloomberg's Josh Green quoted a financial CEO who attended another Clinton speech as saying Hillary "lavished praise on Wall Street, said you guys are the pillar of our economy."  Ruh-roh: how will the increasingly left-wing Dem electorate react to that? GOP strategist…

In a Friday piece, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait delved into why he’d welcome seeing Donald Trump atop this year’s Republican ticket. For one thing, there's the possibility of permanently driving a wedge between the party’s masses and its financial elite. “The GOP is a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic fear…to win elections and then, once in office, caters to its wealthy donor base…

Appearing as a guest on Saturday's CNN Newsroom with Poppy Harlow, CNN political commentator Carl Bernstein declared that, after spending time talking to the White House about Hillary Clinton's paid speeches to Goldman-Sachs, that they are "horrified" that Clinton is "blowing up her own campaign," and invoked President Richard Nixon's tapes as possibly comparable to the transcripts of her…

Madoff was a very well done, 4-hour television event. Telling the story of, obviously, Bernie Madoff and his $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, it had a very “Goodfellas” feel to it, complete with good use of flashbacks and music.

Critics who warned in 2010 that the odious Dodd-Frank law's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would become a rogue agency which would become a largely unaccountable behemoth on a mission to create problems where none exist could not have been more correct. Sadly, searches on terms relevant to one of the agency's latest controversies involving the distribution of funds in a two year-old auto-…

Over the past several months, economics reporters at the Associated Press have told us time and time and time again that the U.S. economy is "largely insulated" from adverse economic developments overseas. So why is the AP's Martin Crutsinger going along with the now-shifting conventional "wisdom" that Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve may have to defer implementing additional interest-rate…

Hillary's in hot water. Needs Fauxcohantas. That, in a nutshell, was Mika Brzezinski's argument on today's Morning Joe. At the end of a segment highlighting the way Bernie Sanders has gone after Clinton for the massive "speaking fees" she's received from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms, Mika concluded: "the only person that can help her now is Elizabeth Warren, and she's going to have…