Special Features

Ralph Nader today issued the following statement: The multistate settlement agreement between some state attorneys general and Big Tobacco is plainly a sweetheart deal concocted by the addictive companies’ law firms for the industry. State AGs should reject it. The reported insistence by the industry that states accept the deal on a take-it-or-leave-it basis within…

From The Nader Letter Feb./March 1998 Washington Rule # 1 — Never underestimate the ability of Congress to repeat its mistakes. This rule is being played out with a vengeance in the mad rush to ram the financial deregulation package through the House of Representatives before the spring recess. The “act now, think later” stampede…

From The Nader Letter Jan. 1998 In recent years, banks, credit card companies and others in the financial industry have been pushing high-cost credit on consumers in a reckless reach for bigger profits. Ed Furash, a banking consultant in Washington, told the New York Times that the entire consumer credit business has been engaged in…

From The Nader Letter Dec. 1997 Several presidents of small independent banks have written with complaints that our column (“Eliminating Competition, October 1997) was overly generous to the credit unions and failed to mention key concerns of the banking industry. The issue that prompted the column is the bank-financed lawsuits which seek to eliminate the…

From The Nader Letter Oct./Nov. 1997 THE NATION’S BANKING industry, enjoying year after year of record profits and growing political and economic dominance, has a simple corporate strategy about competition — “don’t meet it, just eliminate it.” The industry’s current legal battle against the smallest segment of the financial community in terms of assets —…

From The Nader Letter Sept. 1997 For years consumer and community groups have teamed up with progressive members of Congress to push for the establishment of “lifeline” banking accounts that would provide low-income families with basic banking services on affordable terms. Invariably, the pro-bank majorities have been able to sidetrack the proposals. Last year Congress…

From The Nader Letter June 1997 In late June, the Banking Committee of the U. S. House of Representatives adopted by anarrow 28 to 26 margin the most far reaching financial legislation since the New Deal. Big news? Not in the eyes of much of the national media which, for the most part, left coverage…

From The Nader Letter May 1997 Much of the Federal Reserve’s power is based on a storehouse of myths that have been carefully nurtured by successive Fed Chairmen over the years. No myth is longer lasting than the often repeated claim that the Federal Reserve Board must have power over bank regulation in order to…

House Banking Committee Chairman Jim Leach’s performance on banking legislation in the recently departed 104th Congress drew a lot of negative reviews from both the financial community and the consumer movement — albeit for different reasons. But, Leach may be up to some new tactics in the 105th Congress. Even before the new Congress organized,…

THE 104TH CONGRESS IS down to its final days, and the Senate and House Banking Committees need to face up to their number one priority — straightening out the deposit insurance funds. Extending back to the last Congress, the two committees have procrastinated over what to do about recapitalizing the saving associations insurance fund (SAIF).…