Yale professor Robert Shiller delivered a profoundly odd op-ed this weekend arguing that Occupy Wall Street and promoters of “financial innovation” have the same goal in mind, to “democratize” Wall Street. He picked up from his students some positive chatter about “crowdfunding,” where small investors seed startups with capital over the Internet, and he turned [...]

CREDO, the online progressive organizing group, alleges in a new email to supporters that the Justice Department has not delivered the promised (and paltry) number of 55 staff members to the RMBS working group, the task force co-chaired by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate the mortgage securitization practices of the leading banks. [...]

I’m not suggesting that convicted con men should perpetually give testimony in Congressional hearings. But on something like the JOBS Act, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Because they could tell you in a matter of minutes why you wouldn’t want to relax restrictions on capital formation to this degree. Mark L. Morze knows [...]

Pursuant to my last post, a substantial part of the push to fire Ed DeMarco or force him to engage in principal reductions comes from the direct action bank accountability groups that have been the most aggressive and least connected to the “extend and pretend” idea. So even though writing down GSE loans without fully [...]

In a speech yesterday, Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Ed DeMarco, said that he would make a new determination on the efficacy of principal reduction for underwater borrowers in Fannie and Freddie-backed loans by the end of this month. The GSEs own or guarantee $5 trillion worth of home mortgages, a substantial [...]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Yves Smith points us to a nice takedown of the woeful JOBS Act, which should get signed into law this week. Chris Hayes had Bill Black and Alexis Goldstein of Occupy the SEC on to talk about it, with Rep. Carolyn Maloney making [...]

After both houses of Congress passed it, the White House is finally recognizing that the deregulatory bill they proposed and pushed is distasteful to liberals who have actually looked at it for longer than two seconds: White House allies are in an uproar over pro-business legislation embraced by President Obama, exposing a new rift in [...]

In the most damning evidence thus far of malfeasance at MF Global, Bloomberg reports that former New Jersey Senator and Governor Jon Corzine, while CEO of the company, personally ordered $200 million in investor funds transferred to cover an overdrawn account at JPMorgan Chase. Bloomberg has the goods in the form of a memo from [...]

The Senate invoked cloture today on the JOBS Act, the financial deregulation bill that Reid pulled from the floor yesterday after the failure of some amendments that would strengthen the investor protections. The vote was 76-22, with all the no votes coming from Democrats, including (surprisingly) New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, who must be representing the [...]

Bad news for bank accountability. A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals said today that the SEC would “have a strong likelihood of success” in getting a ruling of District Court Judge Jed Rakoff overturned. That ruling refused to allow a settlement in an SEC mortgage backed securities case against Citigroup to [...]

So Eric Schneiderman’s team is a little upset with me, I assume, over this post. I can only assume that, because I haven’t had any direct contact. But indirectly, I’ve heard accusations of “misinformation and outright misrepresentations” lodged at me. I guess I’m not on the good guys team to get a phone call anymore. [...]