Why I sought to modify Dodd-Frank

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:00:00 +0000

I know that writers, even good ones, sometimes address questions like, "Why do liberals aid the 1 percent?" to the general blogosphere rather than to the subject about whom they are about to theorize. That way they can imagine the answer that best feeds their postulate. However, as one of the liberals referenced in Gary Weiss' Salon article but never asked, I'd like to to respond to the question after the supposed "fact."

My opposition to the Senate-added swaps “push-out” provision, Section 716, was based solely on the fact that it was wholly at odds with two central tenets of the Dodd-Frank Act, reducing systemic risk and increasing derivative market-transparency, and not, as Weiss inaccurately states, on some conjured out of whole cloth allegiance to the so-called “1 percent.” Of course, if Salon had bothered to ask me why I opposed Section 716, then the story would not have been necessary at all. But, of course, that was the point.

Why liberals aid the 1 percent

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:21:00 +0000

Most people view Wall Street as less a geographical location than a kind of metaphor, like “the Beltway” and the “Rust Belt.” But it is an actual street, and the firms that surround it—and are spread across Manhattan—employ millions of fine, hardworking people.

I make that point by way of pleading for mercy for a really good person who has strayed. Her name is Carolyn B. Maloney, and she is a Democratic member of Congress from New York City and sits on the House Financial Services Committee. Do not hate this woman, even though she has joined in the effort to slice away at the ineffectual Dodd-Frank non-market-reform “market reform” legislation, by co-sponsoring a bill that is gutting transparency in the swaps market. She knows not what she does. Well, OK, she knows perfectly well what she does, but she can’t help herself. She’s represents New York, you see.

Salon.com > Gary Ackerman

Why I sought to modify Dodd-Frank

Why liberals aid the 1 percent