One way you can judge whether the latest foreclosure fraud trial balloon is legitimate or just more talk is from the reaction by public officials who oppose a settlement. The indications are they’re taking it seriously. But they’re also making some great points about why it needs to be shut down. First, Sen. Maria Cantwell [...]

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 [...]

In a way, I’m not sure why the President made a jobs speech to Congress yesterday at all. Clearly all of our job worries have been solved with the passage of a patent reform bill: As expected, the U.S. Senate passed patent reform legislation by a vote of 89 to 9 on Thursday evening, paving [...]

The Federal Trade Commission has opened a long-overdue investigation into whether speculators are manipulating the price of oil. The FTC is using powers granted to them by the Dodd-Frank law, which criminalizes manipulation of the oil markets. They have the ability to subpoena market players to determine whether they are in violation, and initiate fines [...]

The CFTC’s move against oil speculators who criminally profited from driving up prices in 2008 has put into sharp relief the current state of the oil markets, and the role of speculation. But according to some Wikileaked documents, Saudi Arabia told the US as far back as 2007 that speculation was artificially spiking prices, which [...]

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged one trading house and two individuals for illegally manipulating oil prices during the price spike of 2008, when oil reached $147 a barrel, by creating the appearance of a shortage to drive up the benchmark for crude. While the action covers oil trading in 2008, the connection to today, [...]

I’ve said for many months now that Dodd-Frank was not a bill, but a promise to write a bill later. The implementation process lay ahead, and that meant that regulators would have the ability to interpret the will of the Congress. Congress gave them this power very willingly – there are dozens of studies and [...]

Analysts in Washington point to rising tensions in the Middle East and the uncertainty in Libya as the reasons for the recent spike in oil prices. They don’t like to mention speculation. Matt Taibbi and others have documented well the speculative bubble in oil and commodities that rose in 2008, causing food riots and starvation. [...]

I’ve been consistently saying that the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law was not a law, but a promise to write a law later. Hundreds of rules and official studies followed passage in Congress, and we’re just now starting to see the fruits of that. Some of the results have been OK: trading in credit default swaps [...]

Part I of this series, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI. Shirley Snider lives in Vashon Island, Washington, and has a mortgage with Citi. Her story is a textbook example of how banks and servicers have used the HAMP modification program to lock borrowers into worse terms than the program mandates. [...]

One of the question I tried to ask several of the politicians at Netroots Nation was about this oft-remarked statement about small businesses not being able to secure lending. I’ve seen it expressed on both sides: one, that small community banks have tighter leverage requirements and have consequently tightened their lending standards, making it difficult [...]