Yearly Archives: 2012

A little over six months ago, negotiations over the mortgage settlement concluded with a 49 state agreement to address robosigning and other predatory mortgage servicing  and foreclosure practices. This was a pivotal moment, because it was possibly the last leverage point to look into problems with the securitization process that led to the financial crisis. […]

In this interview, Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks and Matt Stoller discuss how Congress worked in 2009-2010, and why an audit of the Federal Reserve was able to get through a dysfunctional political system. It’s a long interview, with some echoing at the beginning, but it’s the most comprehensive discussion of how the fight actually […]

Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller

Barney frank threw a little noticed temper tantrum in early August, intervening in a California Democratic primary between two incumbents, Brad Sherman and Howard Berman. Every ten years, lines for Congressional districts are redrawn, which sometimes throws sitting Congressmen into the same district. This is the case with Berman and Sherman, who hilariously sound alike and both have a similar hawkish posture on Israel. Berman chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, and is a part of Democratic leadership. Sherman is a very senior member of the Financial Services Committee, and is generally seen as an iconoclast. The support of someone like Barney Frank can make a difference in such a primary, so his bitter attacks on Sherman suggest something more than your standard pique is at work here.

Frank, never one to mince words, said while he’d already endorsed Berman in the race, he’d planned on staying mostly uninvolved until Sherman claimed that he’d “had more to do with” the Dodd-Frank bill to regulate Wall Street “than anyone except Dodd and Frank,” and that he’d forced a major change in the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The former Financial Services Committee chairman and author of the Dodd-Frank scoffed at both claims.

“They are both appallingly off the mark, they are fantasies. I am a great admirer of Howard Berman. I am not an admirer of Brad Sherman’s approach, I think it’s superficial and headline-hunting,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “This is unfortunately what he does — makes things up to enhance his role, and there’s no basis for it.”

Frank pointed out that Sherman had voted against TARP both times when it came on the House floor, and said he’d had little to do with the Wall Street reform regulation.

This series is by Patrick Sahr, a Naked Capitalism reader and a former debt collector. Sahr is a graduate of Buffalo State College’s Print Journalism Program.

[Matt here]: This series is running because it’s important to understand the culture of debt collectors, who are increasingly a form of policing in our society. One in seven Americans is currently being pursued by a debt collector.

Debtors:  From Credit Enthusiasts to Cleaned Out in Seven Years

Debtors are different today than they were in 2004.  In 2004, debtors were generally, in conversation, wildly arrogant and optimistic.  Many were wise enough to know that paying a “charge-off” sometimes adversely affects a credit score and others bragged about securing additional lines of credit despite having others in default.  The type of debtor you speak with is contingent on the product you are collecting.  The recently charged-off sub-prime portfolio, in 04, was filled with arrogant knuckleheads who bought the bank’s program of wealth transfer hook, line and sinker ignoring their modest wages and assets.  They leveraged everything they owned to the max just like the banks.  The defaulted amex black card portfolio contained penny-ante corporate villains and upper-middle class people at the beginning of an unpleasant journey, a titanic professional and financial storm.  Letting go of your credit cards is the recommended first step when you batton down the hatches in preparation for that storm.

Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.

One of the reasons I loved Neil Barofsky’s book Bailout is because it is a clear explanation of the incentive structures in our political system. One element of his story that you might find surprising is how rarely elections actually come up among policymakers. Careerism, intellectual capture, subtle forms of bribery, institutional embarrassment, intimidation, bureaucratic jujitsu – all of these have a massive impact on policy outcomes. But elections? Yes, they matter as well. But they aren’t that important. And if you read Bailout, or really just pay attention, what you’ll find is that policy simply didn’t change when Obama took over from Bush, which is a fundamental challenge to our notion of democracy, perhaps even more so than corporate money flooding into our elections.

That is, the idea that all politicians want to do is get elected, and therefore they are worth despising, is actually untrue. If it were true, then you would find politicians constantly proposing and implementing popular policies, like free universal health care, high taxes on corporations, jail for Wall Street bankers, and higher minimum wages. But they don’t do this. The reason, as I wrote in June of 2011 in Beyond Elections – the Hedging Theory of Political Elites, is that political actors are only interested in winning elections to the extent that strategies for winning don’t jeopardize their place in the political class.