Category: Regulation
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The Permanent Corporate Crime Wave
For an issue that concerns a technical feature of global finance, the LIBOR scandal has had a surprisingly strong impact. There is speculation that banks could face tens of billions of dollars of damages in lawsuits that have been filed over their apparent manipulation of the interest rate index. What makes the situation even more…
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The Unlikley Regulator
Since the Citizens United ruling in January 2010, it has appeared that the U.S. Supreme Court was doing everything possible to increase the dominion of corporations. Yet in its astonishing ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Court, among other things, affirms the right of the government to put far-reaching restrictions on one of…
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Will Big Pharma Remain Above the Law?
The recent announcement that a corporation agreed to pay $1.6 billion to settle regulatory violations would normally be considered significant news, but because the company involved was a drugmaker there was not much of a stir. That’s because Abbott Laboratories is only the latest in a series of pharmaceutical producers to pay nine- and ten-figure…
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Con JOBS
Bipartisanship in Washington is back from the dead, at least for the moment, but its reappearance illustrates what happens when the two major parties find common ground: Corporate skullduggery gets a boost under the guise of helping workers. That’s the story of the bill with the deliberately misleading acronym — the JOBS Act — which…
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The Price of a U.S. Manufacturing Revival
A few decades ago, U.S. factory jobs began moving offshore to countries that lured corporations with the prospect of weak or non-existent unions, minimal regulation, lavish tax breaks and other profit-fattening benefits. Workers in those runaway shops enjoyed little in the way of a social safety net, thus making them all the more dependent on…
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Fighting for the Right to Be a Weak Regulator
The conservatives fulminating about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and President Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head it may feel outmaneuvered at the moment. But if history is any guide, the bureau will not be too big a threat to the financial powers that be. The federal government is filled with regulatory agencies…
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Clawing Back from the 1%
Rick Perry has admitted that his recent attempt to revive controversy over President Obama’s birth certificate was done for “fun.” This came after Herman Cain said that his call for an electrified fence to protect the U.S. border with Mexico was meant as a joke. The question, then, is whether their economic plans should also…
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Does the Debt Deal Make You Sick?
Sinking stock markets are not the only sign that the eleventh-hour debt ceiling deal was the wrong solution to the wrong problem. The announcement by Cargill that it is recalling an astounding 36 million pounds of salmonella-tainted ground turkey products is a perfect symbol of the hazards of shrinking government. During the debt ceiling debate,…