Proving yet again that proposed "free trade" deals are about a lot more than trade, Wikileaks has released a set of documents showing how the proposed "Trade in Services Agreement," or TISA, "would take a major step towards deregulating financial industries, and could affect everything from local maritime and air traffic rules to domestic regulations […]
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A joint report by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency concludes that "[d]espite vigorous new regulatory controls adopted in the wake of the recent financial crisis, financial lending has only become riskier." The report cites banks' leveraged lending, which involves making a loan and then […]
The Huffington Post has the story.
The Los Angeles Times carries an op-ed about a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the City of Inglewood, California, against a local resident who has taken portions of the city’s own recordings of public meetings to highlight conduct by the city’s elected mayor that he deemed inappropriate. The defendant has a web site that lambastes […]
After years of laws permitting more and more government surveillance of cell phone and email users' private communications, this week Congress finally passed a law setting limits, the USA Freedom Act. President Obama signed it yesterday. Among other provisions, the law requires the government to seek judicial approval to search the data, which will no […]
NPR reports today on a Michigan State student who protested a tar sands pipeline by using a bike lock to secure himself to a truck involved in the construction. At the end of the 90-minute protest, the student (ironically named Tarr) was arrested for trespassing, which he expected. But the company responsible for the project, […]
As an eye-opening op-ed in the Baltimore Sun pointed out last week, there are places in the U.S., even densely populated places, where access to essential medications is quite difficult. Acutely, pharmacies remained closed in Baltimore in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots. But there is a larger, more systemic problem, as the op-ed […]
…but is having trouble finding allies even on her own side of the aisle, reports Politico. The reason? Although loans from car dealers "are often the largest kind of unregulated debt consumers have" (part of the reason Sen. Warren is seeking greater regulation), the auto dealer industry is powerful: The $730 billion auto-dealer industry enjoys […]
Under a consent order between the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Bank of America, BoA will pay a $30 million fine and increase oversight of servicemembers' accounts to prevent further violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Among the violations found by the OCC here were improper debt collection procedures using affidavits […]
The Hill reports on a proposal in the Senate to create a committee to go after "regulatory overreach." (Read the story here.) But as Public Citizen explains, in the wake of the Amtrak crash, oil train derailments, and massive auto safety recalls, "The last thing Congress should be doing is creating more delays for new […]