Katherine Porter’s book, Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class, is a group of essays based on the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project. The 2007 CBP collected basic information on substantially all Chapter 7 (liquidation) and Chapter 13 (partial repayment plans) cases filed for five consecutive weeks in early 2007, and selected 1000 cases per week for detailed study. The researchers collected data from a) the petitions filed by the debtors, which contain enormous detail about their financial condition; b) other court records; c) questionnaires from about half of the cases; and d) interviews of about 20% of the filers. That is a wonderful cross-section of Americans whose finances were destroyed just before the Great Crash.

The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank released a report yesterday calling for the end of “Too Big To Fail” and the breakup of the largest and most systemically important banks.

In a letter signed by Richard Fisher, the conservative president of the bank, he endorses the research report, and he says that the Dodd-Frank law did not do nearly enough to end the dynamic of Too Big to Fail, and that more must be done immediately to reach this outcome.

In a rare moment of disagreement among major federal agencies, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has found in its preliminary research of student debt that the problem is even greater than they at first surmised. A speech before the Consumer Bankers Association by Rohit Chopra, the student loan ombudsman for the agency, termed the student [...]

As we look closer at the implicit admissions of criminal conduct in the foreclosure settlement, federal policymakers are asking the wrong questions about the foreclosure crisis. It’s not about whether or not homeowners are responsible for foreclosure fraud for simply being too delinquent, or whether Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac will honor principal reductions as a way out of the mess. The real question, given the facts, is whether or not anyone at the state or federal level is willing to shut down what amounts to a criminal racketeering outfit known as mortgage servicers.

At a time when the government will release banks from their shameful conduct in the mortgage industry, they are also conducting stress tests to determine the financial health of those same banks. Given government policy that protects and coddles the banks, I would imagine the health to be shown as pretty darn good. And indeed, that’s the expectation, with the Federal Reserve expected to release the results of stress test to determine how well the banks have been rescued from their own self-destructive folly.

Job growth has picked up, averaging around 250,000 over the last three months. However, GDP growth for the first quarter of 2012, based on various economic indicators, looks to be coming in at 2% or less, which does not typically correlate with major job growth. Does this suggest slowing jobs growth in coming months?

Dayen’s news roundup from late Monday, including stories on Attorney General Holder, oil speculators, Federal Reserve, John Kasich, Rush Limbaugh’s sponsors, Kucinich vs Kaptor, George Will, education protests, “bad” teachers, and much more.

Here’s kind of a neat twist: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants public input for nominations to a Consumer Advisory Board, an outside group of experts who will advise CFPB on the emerging consumer protection challenges and the desired focus of the agency.

The Federal Reserve did not only vow to maintain a zero interest-rate policy through the end of 2014 (a policy that has its critics, incidentally). They also set an explicit interest rate target for the first time ever, as far as I can tell.

Too failed to be big? Today, Public Citizen will send a formal petition to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Financial Stability Oversight Council to break up Bank of America. The petition asks them to “recognize that the Bank of America Corporation . . . poses a ‘grave threat’ to the stability of the United States financial system and to mitigate that threat, as provided by section 121 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.”