“Typically thoughtful but provocative statement by Dennis Kelleher, one of the behind-the-scenes architects of the Dodd-Frank law and now head of the advocacy group Better Markets. Kelleher told Morning Exchange that U.S. banks’ dire first quarter results are a sign “that the banks haven’t won and that taxpayers are better off.” “How so? Kelleher, who […]
“Sir, Jamie Dimon’s annual letter to JPMorgan Chase shareholders makes many good points but fails to connect the dots (“JPMorgan’s Dimon warns of threat to biggest US banks”, April 9). Mr Dimon highlights with pride his bank’s improved capital strength, profitability and shareholder returns. He notes that JPM has posted record results in five of […]
“With the Department of Justice announcing its latest multi-billion-dollar settlement with a too-big-to-fail bank — Goldman Sachs this time — the question we all must be asking is, “Does this mean that real accountability has finally come to Wall Street?” “Unfortunately, we already know the answer is a clear “no.” Too big to fail not […]
“Forty years before Tom Hoenig reached the upper echelons of bank regulation, he was drafted to fight in the Vietnam war. A talented mathematician, he was put to work in an artillery unit doing the calculations that gun crews needed to hit their targets.” “Today he has a different foe in his sights: the US’s […]
“State and federal officials said on Monday that Goldman Sachs would pay $5.1 billion to settle accusations of wrongdoing before the financial crisis.” “But that is just on paper. Buried in the fine print are provisions that allow Goldman to pay hundreds of millions of dollars less — perhaps as much as $1 billion less […]
“Lot of react to the nameless banker who ripped Treasury for its reaction to the judge’s ruling tossing out the Met Life SIFI designation. Per a former agency official: “FSOC spent over a year deliberating over MetLife, reviewed tens of thousands of pages, and held a hearing with MetLife before final designation. So it is […]
“The $14 trillion retirement industry is about to undergo a major overhaul: Brokers for the first time will be forced to consider the best interest of their clients — rather than the brokers’ own fees — in recommending investments. “The US Department of Labor announced the new rules, the first in decades, on Wednesday, after […]
“U.S. finance chiefs often grumble about the tough rules imposed by the Dodd-Frank reforms that followed the 2008 crisis. But most went along with the various strictures, wary of fuelling another bout of anti-Wall Street hostility.” “Not Steven Kandarian, chief executive of the insurer MetLife. He argued that the Obama administration had gone too far when […]
“The public advocacy group Better Markets is calling on a federal court to explain why it has decided to seal an opinion, delivered Wednesday, that struck down MetLife’s designation as a systemically risky nonbank. “The motion, which updates a similar motion asking parties in the suit to demonstrate the reasoning behind the court’s decision to […]
“Better Markets filed in court an updated version of its still-pending request for transparency in MetLife v. Financial Stability Oversight Council. On March 30, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia announced that it had filed an opinion under seal, explaining its basis for granting partial summary judgment to MetLife and rescinding […]
“Opponents of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul won an important battle on Wednesday as a federal judge here stripped the “too big to fail” label from the insurance company MetLife. “With memories still fresh on how the American International Group’s 2008 near-collapse rattled the global financial system, the Dodd-Frank Act empowered regulators to classify certain large […]
“Insurer MetLife Inc won a major regulatory and legal battle on Wednesday when a federal judge struck down the U.S. government’s determination that it is “too big to fail.” “MetLife had argued in court that the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), made up of the heads of the country’s financial regulatory agencies, used a secretive […]
“Wall Street bonuses are about to get locked up for even longer. As part of a hard-fought update of crisis-era compensation rules expected in April, regulators plan to require banks to hold back much of an executive’s bonus beyond the three years already adopted by many firms, people familiar with the matter said. “The new […]
“If it’s true that a man can be judged by the company he keeps, what are we to make of the appointment of former Sen. Phil Gramm as economic advisor to the presidential campaign of Ted Cruz? “The short answer is that they’re cut very much from the same economic cloth, which makes sense if […]
“Sir, Brooke Masters’ Top Line column “Prepare for bitter bankers’ chorus of ‘we were right’ ” (March 5) reminds me of the story of the son who killed his parents and, when convicted, asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan. The condition of the biggest global banks today is due to the […]
“The drive to break up the big banks has won a surprising number of adherents from both sides of the political spectrum — everyone from Neel Kashkari, the Republican head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, to Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the Democratic socialist who has made it the heart of his campaign. “The […]
“Better Markets’ Dennis Kelleher in the Huffington Post: “The critics of the financial reform Dodd-Frank Act are fond of saying that it doesn’t work — some going so far as to say that the financial system is just as much at risk as it was in 2008, if not even more so. … But now, […]
“President Obama met with top financial regulators Monday and later praised their efforts to protect consumers, make the financial system safer and stronger, and prevent the recklessness that led to the economic collapse at the outset of his presidency. “The session in the Roosevelt Room at the White House was designed to rebut critics who […]
“The critics of the financial reform Dodd-Frank Act are fond of saying that it doesn’t work–some going so far as to say that the financial system is just as much at risk as it was in 2008, if not even more so. “We used to joke with them, “Of course Dodd-Frank is working: after all, […]
“An advisory committee stacked with industry representatives has issued a report advising the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to drop its plans for position limits on commodities.” *** “Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets said that “every American pays more for gas, heating oil and cereal than they have to due to unregulated excessive speculation in […]
“Too-big-to-fail banks are generating plenty of anger from the public, but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the real risks to the financial system lie in the vast, lightly regulated corners of the economy called shadow banks.” *** “Unlike commercial banks, the holdings in such entities aren’t insured by the federal government, which means […]
“As Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen recentlytold the Senate Banking Committee, the regulators’ grades on the latest round of the “living wills” for the nation’s 11 most systemically dangerous banks will be released shortly. It’s not clear who should be the most nervous: the banks, the regulators or the American people. “The banks should […]
“Last year was not a big year for raises in America. Collectively, Americans ended the year seeing their compensation rise just 2 percent. “But bank executives are different from you and me. Case in point: Bank of America chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan. On Friday in filing, the bank said it handed Moynihan a 23 […]
“Wall Street woke up with a new problem Tuesday: a Republican Goldman Sachs alum using his new bully pulpit atop the Federal Reserve to suggest the biggest banks should break up.” *** “For too long too many people involved in creating or responding to the financial crash have remained silent about what happened and what […]
“An investigation into allegations that U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in-house judges are prodded to favor the agency in enforcement cases did not uncover evidence to support those claims, the agency’s watchdog said in a report.” “The investigation by the SEC’s Office of Inspector General followed a May 6, 2015 story in the Wall Street […]
“The Securities and Exchange Commission’s budget would increase to $1.78 billion for fiscal year 2017 under the White House’s Feb. 9 budget request, in a step toward the administration’s stated goal of doubling the agency’s funding by 2021.” *** “Grossly underfunding [the SEC] has allowed some on Wall Street to return to their high-risk pre-crash […]
“When Hillary Clinton spoke to Goldman Sachs executives and technology titans at a summit in Arizona in October of 2013, she spoke glowingly of the work the bank was doing raising capital and helping create jobs, according to people who saw her remarks.” *** “On the one hand, if Clinton discloses these speech transcripts that’s […]
“Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both agree that more should be done to rein in the large financial institutions that exert so much influence over both the U.S. economy and the American political system. *** “Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, a Washington, D.C.,-based investor advocacy group formed in the […]
The movie The Big Short tells a compelling version of the greatest economic tragedy to hit the country since the Great Depression — the 2008 financial crash. It also may tell a nightmarish vision of the future. It devilishly tells the story through the eyes and experiences of a small group of quirky outsiders who […]
“Nine months after leaving the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton sat on a stage under the life-size model of a blue whale that hangs in the American Museum of Natural History. “For a fee of $275,000, she had agreed to appear before the clients of GoldenTree Asset Management, the capstone of a lucrative speechmaking sprint through Wall Street […]
“The Tea Party, or however you call the United State’s conservative populist movement, often portrays its origin story as an outraged response to the government bailout of Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. “But that rhetoric has never quite jibed with the pro-bank voting record of its representatives. Now the New York Times has […]
“Wall Street is confronting a presidential election unlike any it has seen: One in which the banking industry is denounced by candidates on the left and the right. “The banker-bashing is prompting uncertainty and disagreement in the industry about how, or whether, to respond. “Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders has said “fraud is the business model […]
“MetLife Inc. doesn’t believe it poses a risk to the financial system. But it isn’t waiting to find out if courts agree. “The insurer is seeking to divest a large piece of its U.S. life-insurance unit as part of a plan to ease some of the capital burden it is expected to face under new […]
“President Barack Obama is not expected during his last State of the Union address to run through a to-do list of upcoming priorities. Rather, he will instead recount the achievements he’s made during his eight-year presidency. One of those achievements he likely will tout will be strengthening protections for retirement savers via the Department of […]
“The proposal that I have put forth about how we rein in the excesses of Wall Street, so we never again face what we did in 2008, has been judged as being more comprehensive, tougher, more effective by Barney Frank, by Sherrod Brown, my friend from Ohio who leads the banking efforts in the Senate, […]
“Secretary Clinton says that Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the financial crisis because shadow banks like AIG and Lehman Brothers, not big commercial banks, were the real culprits. Secretary Clinton is wrong. Shadow banks did gamble recklessly, but where did that money come from? It came from the federally insured bank deposits of big commercial […]
“(Reuters) – Late Wednesday, Delaware U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly announced the indictment of Wilmington Trust, which is accused of hiding failed loans in its commercial real estate portfolio in 2009 and 2010. The bank’s supposed deception of regulators and investors propped up the bank’s shaky financials as it undertook a $274 million stock offering in […]
“Hillary Clinton is using a prominent surrogate to attack Bernie Sanders’ emphatic proposals for reforming Wall Street: Gary Gensler, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “Gensler, who is the Clinton campaign’s chief financial officer, has enormous credibility among financial reformers after his aggressive (and lonely) efforts to rein in banks during the early […]
“Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was widely criticized in 2013 for suggesting that the nation’s largest banks are too big to jail. “In Delaware, the addition this week of Wilmington Trust as a defendant to the criminal indictment already pending against four top-tier bank executives stands in contrast to that. *** “I applaud [the […]
“Millions of Americans saw “The Big Short” over the holidays. The blockbuster movie, based on the book by Michael Lewis, is a primer on how the crookedness and fraud rampant in the U.S. financial system brought down the global economy in 2008. “If you left the theatre with steam coming out of your ears, you […]
“BIG IDEA REACT — Better Markets’ Dennis Kelleher on the two items from Monday on the recovery: “The recovery has been so bad because the 2008 financial crash was the worst since the Great Crash of 1929 and it caused the worst economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Once those facts are acknowledged, […]
“Better Markets’ Dennis Kelleher: “The passing of former Congressman Mike Oxley is a loss for the nation. He put the good of the nation and solving problems ahead of partisan politics and special interests. After the Enron Corporation imploded and other outrageous corporate scandals, Republicans and Democrats worked together, led by Republican Rep. Oxley and […]
“The MassMutual office tower looms large over Springfield, a symbol of the powerful role the insurance company plays in the home district of Representative Richard Neal. “Now Neal is coming under fire for sponsoring legislation that would protect MassMutual — which is the veteran lawmaker’s biggest source of campaign money — and other insurance and […]
“As President Obama prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address on January 12, it’s difficult to remember how incredibly bad the economy was when he took office seven years ago and how important financial reform is to getting the economy working again for all Americans. “Unfortunately, this difficulty in remembering isn’t an […]
“Elizabeth Warren captivated the political world for a good portion of 2015 with will-she-or-won’t-she suspense over a potential presidential run. “By June, even her most ardent supporters conceded she was out, and much of the spotlight trained on the freshman Massachusetts senator shifted as the White House race heated up without her. “But with her […]
“The verdict is in on the big year-end tax and spending deal, and everyone agrees that Wall Street was one of the biggest losers. Bank lobbyists had a giant wish list of riders to attach to the must-pass package. They hoped to roll back Dodd-Frank regulations, deliver a mortal blow to the Consumer Financial Protection […]
“As the American people’s cop on the Wall Street beat, the Securities and Exchange Commission should prioritize market integrity and investor protection. But unfortunately, the SEC has largely been missing in action just seven years after the financial crisis that cost our economy trillions and hurt many American families who lost their homes, jobs, savings […]
“Lot of people peeved with the anonymous snipe at Hillary Clinton saying the GOP wants to defund the CFPB even though the CFPB is funded through the Fed. Dennis Kelleher from Better Market: “Republicans have consistently tried to eliminate CFPBs independent funding and subject it to the annual appropriations process, where, for example, they have […]
“In “How to Rein In Wall Street” (Op-Ed, Dec. 7), Hillary Clinton shined a light on Wall Street’s back-room deal-making as it tries to use the appropriations process as a way to enact its dangerous deregulatory agenda. “Unfortunately, some members of Congress from both sides of the aisle are working with Wall Street lobbyists to […]
“As lawmakers work to negotiate a government spending bill, the financial industry is lobbying against a rule being crafted by the Labor Department aimed at protecting workers with retirement accounts. “Workers with retirement accounts may have a stake in this next story. It’s a debate over financial regulations, including one that is aimed at protecting […]
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