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Killing America One Vote at a Time: Why the CFPB Matters
The Honorable Richard Shelby, Mitch McConnell and -- to quote Spiro Agnew -- "those nattering nabobs of negativism" (by which I mean the 43...
Memo to American Consumers: You Just Got Screwed… Again
The too-big-to-fail boys and their GOP handmaidens -- the Hon. Richard Shelby, the Hon. Mitch McConnell and the other 43 legislative dwarves in the...
Chestnuts, Jack Frost and Wall Street’s Spring Bonuses
As we ring out what has been a pretty lousy year for most of us, Wall Streeters are all aglow -- thoughts turning to...
Playstation Invasion: Child Identity Theft is No Game
By now almost everyone I know (and millions of people I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet) has read or heard about Sony’s...
Debt Collector: I’m From the Government – As Far As You...
In a monumental act of hubris and deceit, an Erie, PA debt collection firm had employees pose as sheriff’s deputies and staged phony courtroom...
The Next Osama Bin Laden Already Has Your Social Security Number
A massive cyber attack on American infrastructure is the 21st-century equivalent of the neutron bomb. All buildings remain standing but systems inside them are...
What the Death Penalty and Foreclosure Have in Common (You Will...
There is so much news---mostly ugly news from the consumer point of view---about the foreclosure crisis, but it seems one of the most important...
Tea Time for the Occupation
Historically, America's greatness as a country could be measured by the social mobility of its citizens. If you worked hard enough at a well-defined...
I’m a One Percenter Who’s Pre-Occupied with Wall Street
I confess I'm a one percenter.
I guess I'm one of the folks that the people down on Wall Street are pointing their fingers at....
If You’re Worried About Medical Privacy, Better Take Some Xanax
It was announced recently that nearly 5,000,000 patient records of military personnel were stolen. There was no elaborate hacking, and no technical skill was...
Bank of America, Adam Smith and a Fee Market System
This week, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) made a remarkably pithy statement on the floor of the Senate that Bank of America patrons should "vote...
Memo to Obama: Push for Jobs, Don’t Shove Employers
The American Jobs Act provides yet another example of President Obama potentially snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It proposes a punitive response...
How to Fix the Foreclosure Crisis: A Real Bailout
We need a real bailout, because the last one relied on a bad theory -- namely: horse-and-sparrow "trickle-down" economics. Why do we need a...
Consumers Be Damned: Senator Shelby, Captain Queeg and the Politics of...
Last week's Senate Banking Committee hearing on the nomination of Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau featured prepared speeches that were...
Freddie and Fannie — Has Everyone Gone Postal?
Between Freddie and Fannie's latest woes and the United States Postal Service teetering on collapse, it's been a bad week or so for quasi-governmental...
Medication for Middle-Class Mortgage Mania
Everything old is new again....
Between 1634 and 1637, tulips became all the rage in Holland. The record of exactly what happened is sketchy and...
$2 a Gallon Gas, Michele Bachmann? Aim Higher.
Big city-dwellers notwithstanding, American consumers may purchase gasoline more frequently than any other item. In fact, according to a 2009 Nilson report, when it...
Zero Sum Game: The Black Box of the Congressional Budget Process
So, how do you do your household budgeting? Millions of us use QuickBooks or some variation thereof. For those who are technologically challenged (I...
The Silver Lining in the U.S. Debt Downgrade
No matter which side of the political fence or economic Continental Divide you sit on, few can deny that this was the week that...
Of Debt Ceiling Debates, Non-Denial Denials and Non-Default Defaults
In 1980, Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan asked the American people: "Are you better off than you were four years ago... Is America more...