Obama’s financial sector regulation overhaul comes up short

President Barack Obama rolled out his plan to overhaul financial regulation last week. While much of the Obama plan relies on the same regulators and structures that led to the current meltdown, there is one key exception.

The establishment of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency would give ordinary citizens a seat at the financial policy table for the first time and prevent the abuses in credit card and mortgage lending that have wreaked havoc on households all over the country.

Reining in the subprime scoundrels

President Barack Obama is scheduled to unveil his agenda for revamping financial regulation later this week. As the economy struggles though a recession created by the banking industry, it’s crucial that Obama and his advisers craft a set of rules ensuring that the financial sector strengthens our economy instead of destroying it.

Road to ruin: Online payday lenders fight regulation

Consumer protection shortfalls are not limited to messy subprime mortgages. Lagan Sebert and David Murdoch detail the payday loan industry’s continued assault on U.S. consumers for the American News Project. By offering small loans, typically in amounts ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, payday lenders target consumers who need money for basic necessities, then charge them outrageous interest rates (as in, above 700%).

Employee Free Choice Act languishes amid corporate bailouts

It’s official: The U.S. economy has been in a recession for a year and a half and many of the economic troubles worrying progressives in 2007 have yet to be addressed. While the Obama administration has taken steps to relieve some problems, a series of counterproductive bailouts, woefully inadequate labor laws and rampant inequality are still in urgent need of attention.

Why Wall Street accountability matters as much as torch and pitchfork futures

With workers all over the globe trudging through a catastrophic recession, it’s almost a given that governments will be battling the economic slide for a long time. Part of the effort to rebuild must involve new rules and regulations, but meaningful systems for economic accountability will be just as essential. If we do not hold the reckless executives who caused this crisis accountable for their actions, we risk regressing into similar turmoil in the near future.

Obama enters banking fray while lobbyists rope-a-dope Congress

President Barack Obama’s sheer popularity will make it harder for members of Congress to water down banking and finance regulations, but his willingness to play legislative hardball has already score a major victory over another key bank lobby priority: student loan subsidies.

Bank execs looting customers, shareholders and taxpayers

Some of the largest U.S. banks may be on the ropes these days, but the disparity between the plight of financial executives and ordinary Americans has never been starker. Over the past two decades, the banking system has grown accustomed to scoring massive profits by preying on its own customers, making 2009′s transition to pilfering taxpayer wallets an easy one.

After burying the economy under a mountain of unaffordable debt, bank CEOs are now finding ways to subsidize their own paychecks with taxpayer bailout funds.

Chomsky: Workers will build the recovery, not Wall Street

With new bailout plans for Wall Street being unveiled almost every week, it’s easy to forget that nearly all of the work that fuels our economy takes place outside of Manhattan. While reviving the financial sector is an important part of recovery, any lasting economic solution must also empower American workers and protect them from corporate abuses.

Workers’ rights are a core issue for our democracy, as progressive icon Noam Chomsky argues in an interview with Paul Jay of The Real News. Chomsky advocates for a much broader palette of reform than a simple cleanup of the financial sector.

Welfare, work and the bailout bonanza

The U.S. economy lost nearly 600,000 jobs in January, bringing total losses in the past three months over 1.5 million — more than the entire population of Philadelphia. If there ever was a good time to mend the tattered U.S. social safety net, it’s now. While unemployment benefits and food stamps remain relatively uncontroversial, basic welfare continues to be neglected by the general media and vilified by the right. And as of this moment, a responsible welfare program is needed more than at any point since the 1930s.

Weekly Audit: Stimulus stagnation

Despite a lofty launch last week, the good ship Bipartisan is sunk, at least so far as the economic stimulus is concerned. President Barack Obama and House Democrats bent over backwards to appease the GOP by including several tax breaks and excluding a major anti-foreclosure measure from the package, but when it came time to vote, zero House Republican backed the bill. Lawmakers who actually care about the fate of the U.S. economy are furious. Every day spent haggling with obstinate Republicans means heavier economic damage. What’s more, many of the tax breaks the GOP insisted on are simply terrible policies, whatever the economic climate.