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 [...]

I was racking my brain for one final story that sums up this era in politics, the state of our world circa 2012, and I have to give it to this one from a few days ago. William Bryan Jennings, whose parents obviously hoped for a Progressive populist reformer as a child, grew up to [...]

It has taken many years, but we might see one Wall Street trader investigated for malfeasance. Glenn Hadden, a former partner at Goldman Sachs now on the trading desks at Morgan Stanley, faces an inquiry into his practices at Goldman. Specifically, regulators at the CME Group, which runs commodity and futures exchanges, are investigating whether [...]

The President and senior Administration officials have met with lots and lots of people about the fiscal slope in the wake of the election. Everyone, in fact, but most of the House Republican deciders who will determine the bulk of the deal. But as it turns out, many of the meeting attendees included Obama campaign [...]

The ACLU’s calss action lawsuit against Morgan Stanley over racial discrimination in lending is out. Five African-American homeowners from Detroit form the core of the plaintiffs, who allege that Morgan Stanley pushed the now-defunct New Century Financial into providing them with a “steady stream of irresponsible, high-risk loans issued in communities of color that were [...]

The ACLU plans to sue Morgan Stanley on behalf of five named plaintiffs (they will seek class action status), for the investment bank’s role in fueling what they view as a discriminatory subprime bubble. In doing so, the ACLU will try to pioneer a new legal strategy, by going after the securitizer of the loans [...]

What you hear from bankers to justify their enormous profits is that they must be obscenely overpaid to ensure the retaining of key talent in the organization. It’s worth pointing out that their own bosses think that’s garbage. The chief executive of the US investment bank Morgan Stanley has said Wall Street pay is still [...]

We do not yet have a very good context for the costs of the Libor rate-rigging scandal. We know that derivatives traders gained when they called in favors and had banks set the Libor in ways favorable to their bets. And we know that banks benefited from artificially setting the Libor down during the financial [...]

I guess Alan Simpson and his recurring set of bad manners has become too much of a liability to those intrepid grand bargaineers. So he’s been pulled for a reliever. Enter Judd Gregg, himself just out of the Senate. Former Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.) is stepping up his role in building Republican support for a [...]

Facebook has bounced back a bit today on its initial stock offering, but it’s still way down from the IPO price. And the company – and those that helped bring it to NASDAQ – have much bigger problems: Morgan Stanley (MS) defended its role in Facebook Inc. (FB)’s initial public offering after a Massachusetts regulator [...]

Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto just reached a settlement with investment bank Morgan Stanley for up to $40 million, over deceptive practices in mortgage lending and securitization. This may seem like a small number, but Morgan Stanley was not a big player in Nevada, and the case itself involves just a small slice of [...]