Crash Survival Zone

By Thomas L. Friedman

I am really encouraged by President Obama’s commitment to clean energy and combating climate change. I just have three worries: whether he has the right policies, the right politics and the right official to sell his program to the country. Other than that, things look great!

Last week, House Democrats, with administration support, [...]

Will a wave of populism push Congress to sign off on consumer-oriented legislation that has stalled for years?
It’s been an annual rite in Washington for more than a decade: Key Democrats in Congress vow to crack down on credit card companies and protect consumers.

Every year, the bills go nowhere. This year could be different.

Many insiders [...]

By Thomas Friedman

When you total up all the emergency economic policies that Mr. Obama has now put in place — a nearly $800 billion stimulus, mortgage relief, a private-public program for buying up toxic assets and a huge capital injection into the banking system by the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and expand credit [...]

Officials Worry Constraints Set by Congress Deter Participation

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading [...]

by Mike Whitney

If Obama was serious about restoring confidence in the markets, he’d dump SEC chief Mary Schapiro and replace her with Eliot Spitzer. That would send a message to the world that the administration means business. Schapiro is another Wall Street toady who believes in “self regulating” markets. Right. As the head of the [...]

Washington had the power to regulate misbehaving banks. It just refused to use it.

By Eliot Spitzer

Does it strike you as odd that the American government has invested $115 billion in TARP money alone in Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America, fully 70 percent of their market cap ($164.5 billion, as of March 30), yet [...]

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Thursday called for broad reforms to curb risk taking on Wall Street, including a new regulator to oversee the entire financial system in a bid to restrain behavior that led to the worst credit crisis since the 1930s.

In testimony to Congress, Geithner said “comprehensive reform” was needed to guard against [...]

By Russell Mokhiber

Fifty million Americans are without health insurance.

More than 22,000 Americans die every year from no health insurance.

The underinsured are dying too.

That’s why, according to recent polling, the majority of the American people want a Medicare for all, Canadian style, single payer health insurance system in the United States.

The majority of doctors want it.

The [...]

Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who is independent in spirit as well as party label, has placed a hold on President Obama’s nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Sounds like a minor issue to get worked up about, but the senator is right. Like most Americans, I am eager [...]

By Frank Rich

A charming visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy [...]