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The Urbanity of Financial Reform The financial reform bill is like a gigantic, half-completed connect-the-dots puzzle. The image is visible if you squint and make a few assumptions – those must be Elizabeth Warren’s spectacles – but much remains unclear. Regulators, some of whom remain...
Posted in DMI Blog on August 4, 2010 01:39 PM
Who Stood Up for the Middle Class in 2008? When election time comes around, members of Congress can’t say enough about the middle class. They’re planning middle-class tax cuts, vowing to attract middle-class jobs, and promising to stay connected with their middle-class constituents. But what really happens once they’re...
Posted in DMI Blog on March 31, 2009 08:14 AM
Auto Bailout Drives off a Cliff (And Takes What’s Left of the Economy with It?) The right-wing spin machine is working overtime telling fairy tales about the cause of nation’s economic crisis. Blame for the home mortgage crisis lays on the doorstep of poor people who had the audacity to want to buy their own...
Posted in DMI Blog on December 16, 2008 08:23 AM
Phil Gramm, Predatory Deregulator It's hard to imagine it, but had Phil Gramm not been ridiculously tone-deaf enough to call people fearing the economic crisis" whiners" – and had John McCain not gotten his clock cleaned by Obama – Gramm could have very well...
Posted in DMI Blog on November 17, 2008 04:08 PM
The Bush Administration's Preemption Legacy Cross Posted From TortDeform.Com: The other day a friend of mine and I were discussing the collapse of the financial market. She said to me that "we all know how this happened." I was afraid to take the bait, because...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 17, 2008 02:58 PM
A Bailout for the Rest of Us One way or another, many of the questions at tomorrow night’s presidential debate are going to boil down to this one: how do we get out of this mess? There are numerous issues – from immigration to civil justice –...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 14, 2008 02:03 PM
From the Frontlines of Foreclosure: A DMI Panel on NY1 (Updated!) The segment will air October 10 on NY1 News at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. FEATURING Mark Winston Griffith, senior fellow in economic justice, Drum Major Institute; co-founder, Central Brooklyn Federal Credit Union Errol Louis, columnist, New York Daily News;...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 9, 2008 03:53 PM
McCain's Mortgage Plan: Flawed and Late to the Party, but Welcomed Coming a week after the $700 billion bailout was signed, the Hail Mary of a $300 billion homeowner rescue pass that John McCain threw during the debate was pretty poorly timed. This kind of plan should have been championed months...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 9, 2008 12:05 PM
Countrywide Settlement: A Model for Assisting the Forgotten Homeowner Blame it on the" new economy". You know things are bad when the government devises a bailout bill that ignores the plight of homeowners facing foreclosure, and then the country's biggest mortgage lender announces a massive mortgage modification program. Countrywide...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 6, 2008 02:20 PM
Who is Erisa, and why won’t she let me see a doctor? One of the most maddening aspects of the nation’s current financial crisis is how many people saw the problems brewing, but were prevented from doing anything about it. Dozens of states acted over the years to ban the predatory lending...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 2, 2008 03:02 PM
DMI Position on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act Congress Must Address the Underlying Housing Crisis The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy encourages Congress to view the next vote on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act as an opportunity to restart the debate on how to "rescue" the economy...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 1, 2008 02:33 PM
Fannie and Freddie: The Progressive Takeaway With all the talk about the most recent meltdown on Wall Street, it might be hard to determine what a progressive policy response to the bailout of Fannie and Freddie looks like. Beyond the obvious, what lessons should be learned?...
Posted in DMI Blog on September 17, 2008 09:00 AM
Mortgages are Harder to Come by. Good. When I hear the pessimism expressed these days regarding the credit crunch in the mortgage market, I remember the guiding principle of the community-owned lending institution I ran during the mid nineties: “The last thing some people need is a...
Posted in DMI Blog on September 3, 2008 08:00 AM
NY's Mortgage Law Hits Home Yesterday New York Governor David Paterson signed a new law to address the state’s home mortgage crisis. The law will provide immediate help to New Yorkers currently at risk of losing their homes while also reforming the lending system to...
Posted in DMI Blog on August 6, 2008 12:58 PM
The Death of Foreclosure Prevention: Giving borrowers what they deserve There is a growing chorus among federal policy makers that may signal a major development in the subprime mortgage crisis. One of the most prominent of those voices is, of course, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who, in his comments on...
Posted in DMI Blog on July 23, 2008 12:53 PM
Surviving the Lived Economy May 20, 2008 - Crown Heights, Brooklyn, USA The dangers of the American economy are getting pretty close to home. Literally. Last night and this morning hundreds of people gathered at the church down the street from my home, at...
Posted in DMI Blog on May 21, 2008 08:00 AM
Paterson breathes new life into proposal to address mortgage crisis Proving once again that public policies can endure when policy makers fail us, Governor Paterson formally announced that he was championing the legislative response to the mortgage crisis that Governor Spitzer initiated literally days before he fell from grace in...
Posted in DMI Blog on May 2, 2008 06:00 AM
New York Sun editorial is subprime piece of fiction Every now and then, there comes a piece of political writing that is so historically inaccurate, poorly written and morally retarded in it's argument that it takes your breath away. Last week's New York Sun editorial by Jerry Bowyer, Don't...
Posted in DMI Blog on April 23, 2008 07:28 AM
Say on Pay, or Why $83 Million a Year Might Be a Bit Too Much John Thain was really raking in the dough last year. Thain, the CEO of Merrill Lynch, earned nearly $83.8 million dollars, despite the fact that his company's stocks fell 41%. So while Thain's fortune was growing exponentially, Merrill Lynch's shareholders...
Posted in DMI Blog on April 8, 2008 06:52 AM
Paulson's Plan: Blueprint for Financial Regulatory Deform? The U.S. federal regulatory system for financial institutions is arguably one of the most complex features of American government. Hard core policy wonks are hard pressed to break down the Byzantine network of relationships between regulatory institutions -- The Federal...
Posted in DMI Blog on April 2, 2008 08:51 AM
Subprime Mortgage Crisis: The View from Washington D.C. I'm writing this entry from Washington D.C. where I am attending the National Community Reinvestment Coalition annual conference. Today's NCRC sessions feature a series of conversations on addressing the foreclosure crisis that includes remarks from Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and...
Posted in DMI Blog on March 14, 2008 08:00 AM
Let's Fulfill Spitzer's Progressive Promise What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday Eliot Spitzer was standing a few feet away from me, announcing his legislative proposal to prevent foreclosures and fight abusive lending in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis. For all his...
Posted in DMI Blog on March 13, 2008 08:34 AM
The More Americans Demand Change, The More The State Of The Union Address Stays The Same DMI’s Rapid Response to the 2008 State of the Union Click here to read DMI’s full analysis of the President’s domestic policy prescriptions – complete with statistics and talking points -- online at www.drummajorinstitute.org/sotu2008 The American people want change....
Posted in DMI Blog on January 29, 2008 02:20 AM
John McCain, Middle Class Champion? Mike Huckabee talks the populist talk, but his actual policy proposals – from noxious tort “reforms” to a National Sales Tax that hits the middle class hard and lets the rich off the hook – are anything but. So in...
Posted in DMI Blog on January 10, 2008 07:21 AM
The Christmas Price Index, or the Economics of the Partridge in a Pear Tree As you shop for your true love this holiday season, will you be buying two turtle doves, twelve drummers drumming, or eight maids-a-milking? What about that ever elusive partridge in a pear tree? If you're like most Americans, your holiday...
Posted in DMI Blog on December 24, 2007 01:10 PM
Mortgage Reform: A Dream Deferred? It's come to this. Once the modest hope of the financial justice advocacy world, HR 3915, The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007, has slipped considerably in the estimation of many of its former supporters. The New York...
Posted in DMI Blog on November 16, 2007 07:00 AM
New NYU Study and Lori Swanson Agree: It's Time to Get Ourselves Out of the Subprime Mortgage Mess A new analysis of subprime loans by N.Y.U.’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy confirms many of ideas that were discussed at DMI's Marketplace of Ideas event on predatory mortgage lending. The report, which was released this morning,...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 15, 2007 11:37 AM
Liveblogging the Marketplace of Ideas: Predatory Mortgage Lending Welcome to the most recent installment of DMI's Marketplace of Ideas! I'm at the Pace Downtown Conference Center, waiting for the event to begin. I'm pretty excited to hear from all the speakers this morning, since I've been hearing...
Posted in DMI Blog on October 11, 2007 10:34 AM
Predatory Mortgage Lending-- they beat it there, can we beat it here? From the news to your neighborhoods the mortgage crisis, in particular the predatory mortgages crisis weighs heavily on the minds of anyone concerned with the health of functional communities and the health of the world financial market. That's big stuff....
Posted in DMI Blog on October 8, 2007 09:22 AM