Despite a slew of damaging revelations Jack Lew has been confirmed by the Senate. With a 71-26 vote Lew received more Republican support than Chuck Hagel. On some level Lew’s easy confirmation is a testament to how much influence Wall Street has in Washington but it still is interesting to compare the two nominations and [...]

When President Obama announced Jack Lew’s nomination for Treasury Secretary he promised Lew would help bring people together, I doubt this is what he meant. From ABC News: Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, declared today that Jack Lew must “never” become secretary of the Treasury. “To confirm Mr. Lew would [...]

Elizabeth Warren has been talking about the conflict of interest inherent in having Jamie Dimon sit on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Timothy Geithner even recognizes a problem, though he limits it to the appearance of impropriety rather than the impropriety itself. Now there’s actual legislation to go [...]

We know that Wall Street speculation shoulders part of the blame for rising gas prices, and that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has done little to stop it. But I didn’t know that even the weak CFTC rules established last year were being challenged in federal court. And the outcome of that court case could [...]

Sen. Bernie Sanders has a new bill out to kill fossil fuel subsidies that come in the form of tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. Instead, Sanders would redirect those funds to generate 10 million solar roofs in America, which would create installation jobs and significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption. “We’ve got to [...]

The news that the State Department Inspector General will investigate the process involving State’s environmental impact study on the Keystone XL pipeline that allegedly was the product of a massive conflict of interest throws a significant spanner in the gears moving to get the pipeline approved. With an open investigation, it would simply be difficult [...]

Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke acknowledged yesterday that the central bank may need to do a better job dealing with asset bubbles. I think I just heard Dean Baker’s head explode. Specifically, Bernanke said that he would move to use interest rate policy and not just regulatory tools to head off bubbles. “In the decades [...]

After the Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted to impose position limits on commodity speculators, the emails started whizzing into my inbox. Since the vote fell strictly along party lines, you’d think the left-leaning emailers would be full of praise for the plan, while the right chagrined. But you would be wrong. There are basically two [...]

More Democratic politicians embraced the #OccupyWallStreet protests today, supporting the core grievances of a broken economy and corporate influence as broadly similar to their own platforms. This includes the co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison, saying that “We share the anger and frustration of so many Americans who have seen the [...]

Dave Weigel has a really nice piece about the Democrats’ cunning plan to trap Republicans into cutting payroll taxes. As Dave says, it wasn’t so long ago that lifting the payroll tax cap was a standard part of any Democrats’ stump speech. In fact, people like Jim Clyburn still mention it today, and Bernie Sanders [...]

Matt Stoller, who worked on Capitol Hill from 2009-10, writes that the Dodd-Frank Act made no structural changes to the banking system, and that his main focus, the audit the Fed amendment, merely allowed “for the beginning of a real debate over our monetary system.” We don’t really have real debates on much of anything [...]