2
Morning Reading
Happy Friday. Wall Street has its eye on a new market. Just take a guess...
Wall Street is licking its chops over climate change (The New Republic)
Financial giants like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have enlisted, all told, more than 100 lobbyists to roam the Capitol and influence the debate over how to curb greenhouse gases. There's a reason for that: Any cap-and-trade bill that puts a limit on emissions and allows polluters to buy and sell permits will create a vast carbon market.
Yes, regulators can stop foreclosures (The Nation)
"When someone does not have stable income because they are unemployed, do a forbearance agreement," said Marks. "Lenders have been doing forbearance agreements for many, many years, and they should continue to do that." A forbearance agreement allows homeowners to not make mortgage payments over a specified period of time and not accrue additional fees and charges.
Even more pressing, however, is the need to force banks to make permanent modifications...
"The administration has to stop pleading, begging and bribing the servicers to do the right thing," said Marks. "Where is the OCC and the Federal Reserve? Let's require the servicers and the lenders to stop the foreclosures, to restructure the mortgages and make them affordable."
Will a banker bonus tax come here? (Fortune)
Wells Fargo forecloses on farm, leaves animals behind (Providence Journal)
The future of restaurants? (Wall Street Journal) Big bars, small plates and palm readers.
The future of reading (PBS NewsHour):
...studies that show fewer people, especially fewer young people, reading books; the loss of book review sections in daily newspapers; the closing of so many independent bookstores; and so on.
But there are also positive signs, including the many sites and communities of book lovers that have sprung up online.
Government responses to the credit crisis have unambiguously exposed the fact that the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government no long represent the common good. What we have is the old agency problem in spades (first identified by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations).
This arises because the compensation of government office holders is insufficient to finance their campaigns. The result is that elected and appointed officials sellout to whoever provides the money while crafting bogus legislation to appear otherwise. This is particularly heinous now because they are makng us pay for the trillions of dollars lost by financial industry racketeering.
Perhaps what mere citizens need to do in our pro forma democracy is organize their own lobbying organization. Since our public officials are coin operated legislative vending machines, we could form a lobby that will out-bribe the oligarchs and other corporate interests. It sounds absurd, but buying back our officials may be the only peaceful way left to reclaim American democracy from American oligarchy.
