Working Life

  If I was Lloyd Blankfein and you told me that I could pockets hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, play a key role in a scam that cost millions of people their jobs, sent the economy into one of the worst economic tailspins in a half century, escape any personal jail time for […]

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   I have, for a very long time, been very skeptical about every pronouncement of the good news about the "recovery" that seems to be around the corner each time a snippet of data comes out that political leaders grab on to to try to reassure an angry and frustrated citizenry. You can’t say that […]

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   Here we go, another example of a lack of courage: Days after a federal judge blocked his efforts to furlough half the state work force, Gov. David A. Paterson is drafting a plan that would lay off thousands of government workers at the beginning of next year, a move officials say is necessary to […]

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   Health care gets teed up and…the people get half-a-loaf. An economic crisis requiring at least $1 trillion to create jobs–and the people get half-a-loaf. And, ladies and gentlemen, just to keep us consistent, financial reform…half-a-loaf.    Here’s the explanation:  

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   The financial "reform" bill is still not law. One reason is the failure to cobble together enough votes to move past a filibuster. Russ Feingold explains his opposition: Mr. Feingold said he wanted to reimpose Depression-era rules that would bar traditional banks from affiliating with investment firms, among other things. "We need to eliminate […]

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   Chris Dodd is heading into retirement. On the way out, he tried to weaken a key part of the financial reform package but ruffled a few feathers: His amendment would have delayed for two years any ban on derivatives trading and given the Treasury Secretary the ability to quash the proposal outright. Liberal Democrats […]

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   Via The Wall Street Journal today: Federal prosecutors, working with securities regulators, are conducting a preliminary criminal probe into whether several major Wall Street banks misled investors about their roles in mortgage-bond deals, according to a person familiar with the matter. The banks under early-stage criminal scrutiny—J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche […]

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   Duh. The truth is that the only reason they did this and ignored the obvious was greed: Former Bear Stearns Chief Executive Officer James Cayne said Wednesday that his firm’s risk level was too high in the year before it collapsed. "That was the business," Mr. Cayne told a hearing held by the Financial […]

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    I applaud the president for trying to impose some new and renewed standards to try to make sure that what happened on Wall Street doesn’t happen again. But, we are about to miss an opportunity–perhaps a missed opportunity that will haunt us for years to come–to change the debate about our economy and the […]

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   A month ago, I called for the indictment of Lehman Brothers executives–as well as an investigation of the role played by then-NY Federal Reserve head Tim Geithner–for the "materially misleading" actions (that is accounting-speak for scams) that those execs undertook to cover up their financial misdeeds that sent Lehman over the edge–and helped drag […]

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