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Preeti Vissa: The Revolving Door Continues

by on May 17, 2011

Huffington Post…

A while back, I complained about the revolving door between the financial industry, the agencies that are supposed to regulate it and the academic world where economists churn out theories used to justify that regulation or the lack thereof. But to be accurate, I really should have said revolving doors , plural. Unfortunately, Washington has lots of revolving doors between government agencies and the businesses they are supposed to regulate for the good of the public. The result is the appearance of constant, endemic conflict of interest. Exhibit A: Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission approved the controversial merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, despite concerns raised by many of us about a variety of issues, including consumer cost, diversity of content and the fact that so much of the news and information we all depend on is being filtered through a shrinking number of media behemoths. Recently it was announced that one of the commissioners who okay-ed that merger, Meredith Attwell Baker, is leaving the FCC to become a lobbyist for Comcast-NBC. This is the same Meredith Attwell Baker who had said that the Comcast-NBC Universal merger could “bring exciting benefits to consumers that outweigh potential harms.” Baker’s hiring triggered a wave of anger and prompted Timothy Karr of Free Press to write that “disgust” at the move “may become the tipping point for new rules to stop Washington’s revolving door from tempting any bureaucrat to exchange a light regulatory hand for the promise of a high-salaried job.” I hope he’s right. In response to such criticism, Baker issued a statement strongly denying that she’d been courted for the job prior to ruling on the merger, stating, “Not once in my entire tenure as a Commissioner had anyone at Comcast or NBC Universal approached me about potential employment.” I have no reason to doubt the truth of Baker’s statement, but even if true, it’s irrelevant. Both the appearance and reality suggest a Washington culture in which regulators routinely become so cozy with the companies they oversee — theoretically in the public interest — that no one bats an eyelash about regulating Company X today and lobbying for that same company tomorrow. And the public, noticing that these regulatory agencies rarely act as fierce watchdogs for the public good, grows ever more cynical about a government that gives every appearance of being bought and paid for. In the case of the FCC, this is far from an academic argument. The commission is about to consider another controversial merger of communications giants: AT&T’s move to buy T-Mobile. Many of us have serious worries about this latest megamerger and what it means for affordable broadband access. Many individuals and organizations will be filing official comments and otherwise weighing in with questions and concerns about the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. It would be nice to feel sure that the commissioners entrusted with approving or rejecting the purchase aren’t angling for a post-merger job lobbying for the newly-expanded company. I hate to say it, but right now I don’t feel sure about that. What I feel is a sinking feeling in my stomach. It’s time for serious reform. It’s also time for those who take positions that involve looking out for the public interest to actually put that interest ahead of private gain. If regulators eventually approve the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, it shouldn’t be because they think the okay will look good on their resume.

Originally posted here:
Preeti Vissa: The Revolving Door Continues

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Goldman’s For-Profit Colleges Battle Obama Crackdown

by Mother Jones on September 2, 2010

It’s a classic move by an industry player feeling the squeeze of pending regulation: Hire a lobbying firm to create the appearance of widespread opposition via a carefully stage-managed astroturf campaign. One of the latest outfits to give this strategy a try: Education Management Corporation (EDMC), a multibillion-dollar heavyweight in the for-profit higher education industry that’s the subject of multiple lawsuits and ample criticism from investors, lawmakers, and government officials who accuse the company of a range of deceptive business practices. The company, whose majority stockholder is Goldman Sachs, recently hired a GOP-linked lobbying shop known for its astroturfing prowess to fight a proposed federal rule that has the entire industry fretting about its future.

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Goldman’s For-Profit Colleges Battle Obama Crackdown

Philadelphia Housing Director Facing Foreclosure

August 14, 2010

PHILADELPHIA — A bank has foreclosed on a $615,000 condominium owned by the head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, who earned $350,000 last year leading the nation’s fourth-largest public-housing agency. Carl R. Greene, PHA’s executive director, bought the three-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot condo in the upscale Naval Square development in 2007. He put down $215,000 in cash and took out a $400,000 mortgage, city records show. Greene, 53, stopped making payments on or around April 1, and three months later owed more than $7,500 in missed payments and late fees, according to the bank’s July 27 lawsuit. A spokesman denied that Greene has any financial problems, and said he is instead locked in a dispute with the mortgage company. Spokesman Kirk Dorn said he did not know the nature of the dispute, though he acknowledged the public’s interest in the case. “We all understand the irony of the situation,” Dorn said. “We’re very concerned about the appearance of the head of a large housing organization not paying his mortgage. But until the matter is resolved, Mr. Greene is simply not willing to air this dispute,” he said. Because of the missed payments, Wells Fargo is demanding that Greene pay in full the $386,685 outstanding on the mortgage. Greene himself did not immediately return a call for comment left at the housing agency. He is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 16 to take part in the city’s foreclosure-prevention program, court records show. No lawyer is listed for him in the case file. The lawyer listed for Wells Fargo did not immediately return a message. Greene took over at PHA in 1998, after previously working as executive director of the Detroit Housing Commission, and also working for housing authorities in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Greene, who is unmarried and has no dependents, earned a base salary of $306,370 plus a $41,188 bonus last year, Dorn confirmed. The condominium appears to be the first property he has owned in Philadelphia, according to city real estate records. The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported on the foreclosure proceedings.

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Philadelphia Housing Director Facing Foreclosure

August 14, 2010

PHILADELPHIA — A bank has foreclosed on a $615,000 condominium owned by the head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, who earned $350,000 last year leading the nation’s fourth-largest public-housing agency. Carl R. Greene, PHA’s executive director, bought the three-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot condo in the upscale Naval Square development in 2007. He put down $215,000 in cash and took out a $400,000 mortgage, city records show. Greene, 53, stopped making payments on or around April 1, and three months later owed more than $7,500 in missed payments and late fees, according to the bank’s July 27 lawsuit. A spokesman denied that Greene has any financial problems, and said he is instead locked in a dispute with the mortgage company. Spokesman Kirk Dorn said he did not know the nature of the dispute, though he acknowledged the public’s interest in the case. “We all understand the irony of the situation,” Dorn said. “We’re very concerned about the appearance of the head of a large housing organization not paying his mortgage. But until the matter is resolved, Mr. Greene is simply not willing to air this dispute,” he said. Because of the missed payments, Wells Fargo is demanding that Greene pay in full the $386,685 outstanding on the mortgage. Greene himself did not immediately return a call for comment left at the housing agency. He is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 16 to take part in the city’s foreclosure-prevention program, court records show. No lawyer is listed for him in the case file. The lawyer listed for Wells Fargo did not immediately return a message. Greene took over at PHA in 1998, after previously working as executive director of the Detroit Housing Commission, and also working for housing authorities in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Greene, who is unmarried and has no dependents, earned a base salary of $306,370 plus a $41,188 bonus last year, Dorn confirmed. The condominium appears to be the first property he has owned in Philadelphia, according to city real estate records. The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported on the foreclosure proceedings.

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Debrahlee Lorenzana, Citigroup’s Too Sexy Banker: I’ve Been Harassed My Entire Life (VIDEO)

June 7, 2010

Debrahlee Lorenzana hasn’t stopped making the media rounds after filing a highly-publicized lawsuit against Citigroup in which she claims she was fired for being too good-looking. In an appearance Monday morning on NBC’s “The Today Show,” Lorenzana told a brief version of her story, which was initially reported at — at length — by The Village Voice . Lorenzana claims that a New York City Citibank branched fired her because her figure and wardrobe were “too distracting” to her coworkers. The New York Post reported this morning that Lorenzana’s was told by her current employer, JPMorgan Chase, that she may be fired her for her very public campaign against Citigroup. In the “Today Show” interview, Lorenzana appeared next to her attorney Jack Turner, who said that Citigroup “fired her the day she complained the second time. It was obviously a response to her protected civil rights complaints.” Lorenzana told the “Today Show” that she only filed suit against Citigroup after a lifetime of mistreatment for her appearance. “What I’m trying to make is a point that enough is enough,” Lorenzana said. “I’ve been through my entire life going through [this] harassment.” “There’s a point where you say I don’t want to go through this any more,” she added. “So, now I’m trying something different.” Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy

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Greenspan Says His ‘Friends’ Got The Financial Crisis Right – And Trades Barbs With Michael Burry (VIDEO)

April 5, 2010

In a New York Times op-ed yesterday, Michael Burry , the reclusive hedge-fund manager profiled in Michael Lewis’s best-selling “The Big Short,” lambasted former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan and his colleagues, claiming that they “either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted the bubble.” Burry, who was trained as a medical doctor and suffers from Aspberger’s syndrome, placed huge bets that the subprime market would collapse and helped make his investors many millions. Greenspan responded to Burry’s op-ed in an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” where he told Jake Tapper that while almost everyone failed to predict the implosion of the subprime market and while some people predicted it by chance, there was a “very small group, most of whom are my friends, who got it right, for the right reasons.” Burry, he said, may well have been one of those people: “I don’t know whether or not he is in that extremely small group… . I know four or five people who are really good. I don’t know six, seven, eight or nine.” In an appearance on Bloomberg Television last week, Greenspan insisted that Burry’s successful prediction of the subprime crisis was a “statistical illusion.” Burry, for his part, says that Greenspan “should have seen what was coming and offered a sober, apolitical warning.” But that’s not what happened. And, peculiarly, in the years since the subprime market imploded, Burry says policymakers have shown little interest in understanding how or why he was able anticipate the timing of the crisis with such accuracy. Rather than a simple dismissal of those who got it right, Burry argues: “Mr. Greenspan should use his substantial intellect and unsurpassed knowledge of government to ascertain and explain exactly how he and other officials missed the boat. If the mistakes were properly outlined, that might both inform Congress’s efforts to improve financial regulation and help keep future Fed chairmen from making the same errors again.” Watch Greenspan discuss Burry in this clip from his appearance on “This Week” yesterday:

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Stephen Balkam: Sex.com To Be Auctioned: Hey, Bill Gates, How About Bidding on it?

March 10, 2010

One of the most valuable pieces of cyber-real estate is up for sale. According to Wired, sex.com will be auctioned on March 16 and the opening bid is a mere one million dollars. Do we really need another porn site? Can we make do with the estimated 1.3 million sex-related sites already on the web? Never mind the ever popular user-generated sites where folk upload last night’s activity for free without so much as a fee or password required. No, I think it would be an amazing piece of largess – not to mention an inspired acquisition – if Bill Gates and his Foundation, were to outbid everyone and snap up this heavily trafficked site. Then the smart folks at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could convert sex.com into the world’s leading safe sex portal in an effort to stop the spread of HIV and the myriad of other sexually transmitted diseases, while also curbing the rise of unwanted teenage pregnancy. Whatever you think of online porn — whether you have a laissez-faire attitude or are an outright opponent of the stuff — the world wide web would not miss the disappearance of sex.com as a sexual shop front. What would be inspired would be the appearance of educated and fact-based messages, videos, tips and guides on how to have a wonderful and loving sex life being responsible and safe for you and your partner. Who better to deliver such a site than the man who presided first over the spread of the personal computer to every corner of the globe and who is doing his level best to give away his personal fortune, particularly to those corners where HIV/AIDS and other STD’s are so rampant. So come on, Bill, be a sport. $1M or thereabouts certainly won’t break the bank. Put a smile on our faces and a good feeling in our hearts. And, in the future, when kids land on sex.com they’ll get some real sexual education and tips that will keep them, their partners and, eventually, their own children safe. You know it’s the right thing to do.

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Jill Schlesinger: Credit Card Companies: Legalized Drug Dealers Strike Again

October 9, 2009

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Wells Fargo plans to raise interest rates on all credit card customers by 3% on November 30 th . Funny coincidence- House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank wants to speed up the enactment of the Credit Card Act from February 22, 2010 to December 1. Sometimes I wonder just how low the credit card companies can sink, but then I remember that some of the card company practices are akin to legalized drug dealing. Once they got you hooked, it sure is hard to get off the stuff. For more on this analogy, check out my appearance on CNET’s 404 podcast with my pals Jeff, Wilson and Justin. Yes, I know that the users are responsible for their actions too, but until the credit card reforms became law, the government made it too easy to fall prey to the dealers. That said, there are signs that Americans are kicking the credit card habit . The Federal Reserve reported that total consumer credit outstanding fell $12 billion in August, or a 5.8% seasonally adjusted annual rate. It was the seventh straight month of declines, the longest stretch since 1991. The numbers suggest that both borrowers and lenders are pulling back and over the long haul, that’s a very good trend. That’s all well and good Jill, but what if you still have that nagging debt hanging over your head? Check out this video — Consumer Reports Senior Editor Mandy Walker gives some great advice on credit cards.

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Greenspan: No Second Stimulus, We’re "Getting Close" To End Of Job Losses (VIDEO)

October 4, 2009

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Sunday that the U.S. economy was “getting close” to the point where it would stop losing jobs. But during his appearance on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Greenspan also predicted that the level of unemployment would “penetrate the ten percent barrier” and stay at the level for some time before going down. Despite it all, he stressed, the administration shouldn’t push for a second stimulus package to spur job growth. Speaking days after it was announced that 263,000 jobs had been lost in September — vaulting the unemployment rate to a 26-year high of 9.8 percent — Greenspan was able to muster a bit of cautious optimism about the economy. He predicted that economic growth in the third quarter of this year would end up greater than his previously predicted 2.5 percent. “The numbers are coming in higher than that,” he said. On the job market front, however, there were not many rays of sunshine. Asked whether a second stimulus package was needed to kick-start additional growth, Greenspan was skeptical, saying at one point that “in trying to do too much you can actually become counterproductive.” “We are in a recovery and I think it would be a mistake to say the September numbers alter that significantly,” he said. “It is true the last couple of weeks some of the numbers coming in have been a little bit soft. But this is what a recovery looks like.” There should be “no new stimulus for two reasons,” he concluded. “One is only 40 percent of the first stimulus has been in place,” said Greenspan. “And there is a considerable debate going on in the economics profession about how effective this stimulus package is. And so, mainly because of the fact that as broad as it is and as effective as it will turn out to be you still have 60 percent left to go. In my judgment it is far better to wait and see how this momentum that has already begun to develop in the economy carries forward.” Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!

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Governor’s hedge fund investment questioned

September 20, 2009

Gov. Jon Corzine has a stake in a private hedge fund related to the corporate owner of four New Jersey casinos, an investment Republican critics contend presents at least the appearance of a conflict for a multimillionaire governor who

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Governor’s hedge fund investment questioned

September 20, 2009

Gov. Jon Corzine has a stake in a private hedge fund related to the corporate owner of four New Jersey casinos, an investment Republican critics contend presents at least the appearance of a conflict for a multimillionaire governor who

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