In the Public Interest

Never try to cut a deal with the lobbyists for the credit and banking industry. Whatever the compromise, they always come back with their hands out for more favors and bigger loopholes to gut protections for consumers and leave them defenseless against both price and privacy exploitation. They’re proving it once again with a massive…

 This is a column of tidbits — to be sure, important tidbits. I think they are part of a mosaic of our times. But I’ll let you decide your favorite theme that runs through them. Here goes. 1. Congress refuses to raise the federal minimum wage to the level of purchasing power that existed in…

Responding to criticism that he and other regulators had gone lightly in fining ten large Wall Street firms $1.4 billion for alleged conflicts of interests, New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer contended that harsher penalties would have done more harm than good for the economy. “We made a decision not to destroy these financial…

As the Enron, Worldcom and related corporate crime scandals of 2001 near their second anniversary, most of the promised reforms are still on the drawing board or awaiting full implementation. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission botched the birth of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board-the centerpiece of the Congressionally-enacted reforms. The first chairman…

For years, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has run a very active enforcement program against major American corporations accused of trading with statutory enemies of the United States. For years, OFAC would call corporate lawyers into their offices, demand that the companies pay to the Treasury Department thousands of dollars to…

A few of the bigger and more outlandish compensation packages for corporate executives may have declined last year in the wake of the Enron-style scandals and a falling stock market, but no one need shed any tears for the CEOs. They are continuing to do avariciously well at the pay window–in most cases much better…

With the chicken hawk-driven war on Iraq in high gear, Bush and Cheney have learned that the best way to silence the Democratic Party, distract from their miserable domestic outrages and provide the corporate and rich classes with favors is to envelop our nation in fear. Using false or distorted statements, contrary to the findings…

If you are facing financial difficulties and heading toward bankruptcy, it is all so much nicer to be a corporate executive than just an ordinary hard working citizen. And if the financial lobbyists and their friends in Congress have their way this year, the disparity between the kid glove treatment of corporate bankruptcy and tough…

If you are facing financial difficulties and heading toward bankruptcy, it is all so much nicer to be a corporate executive than just an ordinary hard working citizen. And if the financial lobbyists and their friends in Congress have their way this year, the disparity between the kid glove treatment of corporate bankruptcy and tough…

As this is written, the campaign known as “shock and awe” has begun over Iraq and the five million civilian inhabitants of Baghdad. Bombs indeed shock, but why the word “awe”? This is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s way of turning the Iraq bombardment against what he knows is a defenseless country, run by a brutal…