About Matt Stoller

Matt Stoller is a political strategist with a focus on Wall Street. Today he does mostly policy work. From 2011-2012, he was a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and an editor of the financial site Naked Capitalism. He also starred on "Brand X with Russell Brand" on the FX network, and was a writer and consultant for the show. Prior to that, he produced for MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show. He is a former Senior Policy Advisor to Congressman Alan Grayson. His primary focus while working for Rep. Grayson was legislation to reform the Federal Reserve.

- You can follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller.
- His tumblr on the history of credit and surveillance is here.
- He writes book reviews and occasional political observations on Medium here.
- He can be reached at stoller at gmail.com.

Some Writing

The Most Important Money in Politics Race of 2014 (Salon)
The Con Artist Wing of the Democratic Party (Review of Geithner's Book) (Vice)
Aaron Swartz and 21st Century Martyrdom (Vice)
In America, Lobbying Used to Be a Crime: Book Review (FireDogLake)
On the Federal Reserve's Independence (TheWeek)
Why the Democratic Party Acts the Way It Does: Book Review (Medium)
Why Is Alan Greenspan's Lawyer Still Controlling the Federal Reserve? (Naked Capitalism)
The Solution to ISIS Is the First Amendment (Medium)
An Elite and Strange Plot to Take Over the World (Salon)
Why We Need to Break Up Amazon - And How to Do It (Naked Capitalism)
Aaron Swartz's Politics (Naked Capitalism)
How the Fed Proposed Bailing Out Mexico to Pass NAFTA (Salon)
Why Corporate Subsidies in the Fiscal Cliff Bill Matter: We Can Stop Corruption If We Understand It (Naked Capitalism)
Eight Corporate Subsidies in the Fiscal Cliff Bill, From Goldman Sachs to Disney to NASCAR (Naked Capitalism)
Trans-Pacific Partnership: The Biggest Trade Deal You’ve Never Heard Of (Salon)
Lazy Corporate Monopolies Are Why America Can’t Have Nice Things (Naked Capitalism)
How Elizabeth Warren Saved Taxpayers $1 Bill (Salon)
A Dream SEC Chief (Salon)
Shared sacrifice – except for CEOs (Reuters)
How Elizabeth Warren Saved Taxpayers $1 Bill (Salon)
The Progressive Case Against Obama (Salon)
Why Ron Paul Challenges Liberals (Reuters)
How the Federal Reserve Fights (Naked Capitalism)
#OccupyWallStreet Is a Church of Dissent, Not a Protest (Naked Capitalism)
The Anti-Politics of Occupy Wall Street (Naked Capitalism)
Occupy Wall Street: The Primary the President Never Had? (Alternet)
How America Could Collapse (The Nation)
Justice Democrats Take on the Banks (Politico)
The Liquidation of Society versus the Global Labor Revival (Naked Capitalism)
Treat Foreclosures as a Crime Scene (Politico)
Federal Reserve Must Be Held Accountable (Politico)
Public Pays Price for Privatization (Politico)
Who Wants Keep the War on Drugs Going AND Put You in Debtor’s Prison? (Naked Capitalism)

Policy and Political Work

Matt Stoller served as Senior Policy Advisor to Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida. As Grayson's legislative aide, Stoller focused on foreclosure fraud, the financial crisis, and the Federal Reserve. He also covered trade and national security, working on legislation to reform the National Institute of Standards and Technology to protect the integrity of cryptographic standards.

Prior to his staff role, Stoller served as a political consultant and blogger in liberal politics and on trans-partisan coalitions. He has worked on media reform and telecommunications issues, including serving as a lead blog advocate in the Save the Internet coalition during the hot-button fight over net neutrality in 2006. He worked with conservatives and liberals in helping to build the Open House Project to increase transparency in Congress, on behalf of the Sunlight Foundation. His consulting clients included MSNBC, Free Press, Actblue, Working Assets, the Sunlight Foundation, NDN, Miramax Books, and They Work for Us.

He been quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Roll Call, The Nation, The New Republic, The American Prospect, CBS News, and Salon, and has appeared on CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, the BBC, and PBS. He has been published in the American Prospect, the New Republic, and the Nation.

Stoller also has substantial electoral experience. He embedded himself in the primary campaigns of Ned Lamont against Joe Lieberman in 2006 and Donna Edwards against Al Wynn in 2006 and 2008. He has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for candidates in small dollar donations through Actblue. He blogged for Jon Corzine for Governor in 2005, for the Democratic National Convention in 2004 on the first blog for a national political convention, and for Simon Rosenberg for DNC Chair. He got his start in politics working for the Draft Clark campaign to bring Wesley Clark into the campaign for President in 2004.

Prior to politics, Stoller worked as a product manager for ICLUBcentral, an accounting and tax software firm located in Cambridge, MA. He is a graduate of Harvard University and a former writer for the Harvard Lampoon.

Policy Work During the Financial Crisis

From 2009-2010, Stoller served as Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida's eighth Congressional district.

In that role, Stoller helped Rep. Grayson pass landmark legislation to require an independent audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time in its history. This legislation also requires unprecedented disclosures of its emergency lending facilities. During the fight over the Fed audit, Stoller helped coordinate an unprecedented internet-driven populist campaign to open the central bank to public scrutiny.

He used traditional Congressional responsibilities, such as oversight, and combined them with internet organizing to generate political power. Stoller staffed Rep. Grayson during his grilling of various regulators and bankers, and worked with financial bloggers such as Naked Capitalism to amplify their impact. In one hearing, Rep. Grayson cornered the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve, a clip which received over 3 million views on youtube. Several members of Congress became cosponsors of the bill to audit the Federal Reserve after watching that clip.

Stoller helped Rep. Grayson keep up forceful pressure on the Fed. In one of Rep. Grayson's most memorable speeches, Grayson mocked the Federal Reserve for accidentally taking ownership of the Red Roof Inn through its Maiden Lane special purpose entities. This speech originated with a tip from a financial blog, a tip which Stoller used as the jumping off point for research. Stoller worked with the staff of Rep. Ron Paul, the Campaign for Liberty, and liberal groups and economists to puncture the mystique of the Federal Reserve. This populist campaign overcame the opposition of the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, Republican and Democratic Senate leaders, and Democratic Financial Services Committee leaders, and the legislation was incorporated into the final Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill.

The following articles should help situate the bipartisan fight over opening up the Federal Reserve:

Huffington Post: Fed Audit Bitterly Opposed By Treasury
Bloomberg: Senator Vows to Block Removal of Federal Reserve Audit Shield
Bloomberg: House Panel Votes to Advance Paul Plan on Fed Audits
The Economist: Who's the radical populist again?
Salon: The Washington establishment suffers a serious defeat CBS: Senate Votes to Audit Federal Reserve

Using the networks developed during the Fed audit fight, Stoller began working on the foreclosure fraud issue in May, 2010. He supported Rep. Grayson's work pointing out that foreclosure fraud was a potential systemic risk, and helped with the popular youtube presentation by Rep. Grayson on MERS, foreclosure fraud, and the financial crisis.

Some Press on Grayson's Foreclosure Fraud Work

Reuters: Regulators' foreclosure review expected in January
Housing Wire: Grayson seeks capital buffers from bank regulators amid foreclosure problems
13 News: Congressman Alan Grayson requests to halt foreclosures
Washington Post: Congressman Alan Grayson explains what went wrong with the foreclosure process
Obama vetoes foreclosure bill as anger grows
Foreclosures Slow as Document Flaws Emerge


Pre-2008 Articles and Speeches
On Spam Media versus Social Media, speech delivered on February 7, 2008, at the University of Connecticut Law School on the beginnings of a new framework for regulating campaign finance.
Dems Get New Tools, New Talent, The Nation: This is about the transformation of political campaigns away from media and towards field.
The Broken Market for Democratic Primaries, OpenLeft.com: The lack of instraparty democracy is an important gap that needs to be fixed in the Democratic Party.
Debate Train to Crazy Town, MyDD: This is about the 10.19.06 debate between Joe Lieberman, Alan Schlesinger, and Ned Lamont.
Jersey Boy, The American Prospect: This article is about a mayoral race in New Jersey and how a progressive Korean-American reshaped one suburban city's politics. I wrote it with Adam Green, a very smart guy from New Jersey.
The Role of Labor in a Political Campaign, MyDD: This piece is about how labor plays a pragmatic and tangible role in the mechanics of a political campaign.
Republicrat Reactionaries, The Clarksphere: This article is about the internet as a new frontier, and how some political figures foster the growth of political space and some do not.
Republicrat Reactionaries, Redux, The Clarksphere: I wrote this to analogize Paul Wellstone to Barry Goldwater, and the internet to Arizona in the 1950s.
Here's more stuff about me: