The Federal Reserve’s independence is dangerous, undemocratic, and a boon to Wall Street


“Regulators who don’t want to change the culture on Wall Street, won’t.” (The Week)


A few months ago, a former employee at the secretive Federal Reserve Bank of New York named Carmen Segarra came forward and blew a big fat whistle. She alleged that she had witnessed regulators, and specifically her boss Mike Silva, act unethically and deferentially towards an entity they were supposed to regulate, Goldman Sachs.
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Lobbying Used to Be Illegal


A Review of Zephyr Teachout’s New Book on the Secret History of Corruption in America. (Medium)


If there’s one way to summarize Zephyr Teachout’s extraordinary book Corruption in AmericaFrom Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, it is that today we are living in Benjamin Franklin’s dystopia. Her basic contention, which is not unfamiliar to most of us in sentiment if not in detail, is that the modern Supreme Court has engaged in a revolutionary reinterpretation of corruption and therefore in American political life. This outlook, written by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in the famous Citizens United case, understands and celebrates America as a brutal and Hobbesian competitive struggle among self-interested actors attempting to use money to gain personal benefits in the public sphere.

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Why the Democratic Party Acts The Way It Does


A book review of “The New Democrats and the Return to Power”       by Al From. (Medium)


There is no end to the whining from Democratic activists after a rotten election, and no end to finger pointing after legislative defeats on contentious questions. This story in the Washington Post is the tell-all of the 2014 wipe-out, featuring the standard recriminations between the President and Congress. In it, the chief of staff of the Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid, David Krone, attacks the White House. “We were never going to get on the same page… We were beating our heads against the wall.” The litany of excuses is long. Democratic candidates were arrogant. The White House failed to transfer money, or stump effectively. The GOP caught up in the technology race, or the GOP recruited excellent disciplined candidates.
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