As Occupy Our Homes demonstrates at the Department of Justice the fraudclosure crisis continues unabated. A Florida family man who not only made his mortgage payments on time but made payments early faces foreclosure by Wells Fargo. The explanation for initiating the foreclosure proceedings by Wells Fargo is nothing short of amazing and offers a [...]

Behold the power of finance capital. Despite shitting the bed and making us all clean it up, Wall Street will remain essentially the same as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) caved to the banksters and will continue to allow a cartel to control the derivatives market. Under pressure from Wall Street lobbyists, federal regulators [...]

Noted Wall Street ski buddy and House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling is moving to re-deregulate derivatives by gutting the Dodd-Frank Act. Apparently one financial crisis this century is not enough for Hensarling and friends as the House today is marking up a slew of bills to help Wall Street avoid derivatives oversight. The Committee [...]

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Life, liberty, and property. These were in theory the founding principles of the republic. But as President Obama meets today with the the Big Banksters to plot his latest attacks on Social Security and Medicare, it seems property rights still only exist for [...]

Optics-obsessed Washington’s latest issue is a lack of women in high profile positions in the Obama Administration. The issue for Obama previously was not a lack of women but their treatment in his administration. Regardless, the President has now floated two women for positions within his administration. From Bloomberg: President Barack Obama is considering two [...]

Despite new regulations and outright promises from CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs is once again engaging in proprietary trading. A practice that lead to a $550 million fine from the SEC when Goldman Sachs mislead clients in order to promote its own accounts. The solution under Dodd-Frank to this behavior was the Volker Rule but [...]

In what is becoming a trend, the Wall Street banks have been able to once again dodge Dodd-Frank, at least for now. From Bloomberg: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Bank of America Corp. won a delay of Dodd-Frank Act requirements that they wall off some derivatives trades from bank [...]

Step right up and Spin the Revolving Door – and what is your prize? Why, a nice job on Wall Street working for the people you used to regulate – you wrote in the loopholes, now you get the cash for exploiting them! Latest contestants – staffers working for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). [...]

The Securities and Exchange Commission released a report on the method for how credit rating agencies get their business, something mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. And just as expected, it showed a serious conflict of interest in the current business model, where rating agencies are paid by the issuer of securities, and have to compete for their business, adding all sorts of distortions into the kinds of ratings they give. A better model, envisioned by Dodd-Frank at first but then put into this study, would allow an oversight board to dole out to qualified ratings agencies the securities that would get rated, removing the conflict of interest entirely.

Taibbi is pretty polite about it, but Obama’s defense involves a lot of misdirection. It assumes that Lehman Brothers, by virtue of having failed, was the only financial institution out there responsible for the collapse, rather than an example of industry-wide behavior.

The American Bankers Association, a trade group for thousands of banks headed by former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, voted to start a legal entity for this federal campaign cycle, adding millions of dollars into an already overstuffed election. The ABA entity would reportedly donate to existing Super PACs, so that the member banks can keep [...]