Gosh — preachers who have no problem railing about marriage equality and racial issues suddenly fall mute when they ponder preaching about the current economic mess. Can you say “Veal Pen Preacher”? Sure you can . . .

Add in a duplicitous visiting scholar from the Heritage Foundation who thinks Jesus preached predatory capitalism as the way of salvation, and you’ve got a nasty combination.

Whatever your thoughts on religion, that combination is truly toxic.

The Bush administration told taxpayers to hand over hundreds of billions of their hard-earned dollars to bail out Wall Street banks because the financial institutions were too big to fail. Now, Rupert Murdoch, owner of politically powerful publications and broadcast stations, claims his News Corp. is too big to know.

The New York Times has one of the most stunning headlines of the day: Losses at Afghan Bank Could Be $900 Million. The story tells a story of Afghanistan’s own “Too Big to Fail” problem that offers opaque descriptions of precisely what caused the problem, but waits until the 17th and 18th paragraph to explain the real problem with the bank. The fact that our government is discovering, but not revealing, the degree to which we have been backing “a vertically integrated criminal enterprise” is the real story.

Immelt and GE aren’t about building the jobs American needs (for graphic representation of that, see this post). Rather, they’re about transforming the fruits of American manufacturing into yet more destabilizing casino games.

I have so many problems with the narrative that TARP and the bank bailouts in general were an unqualified success that I don’t know where to begin sometimes, but a few articles out today should provide a good place.

The freak show has come to staid, pedestrian Delaware, in the form of Christine O’Donnell and her litany of crazy. But while the national media and late-night comics focus on condoms, masturbation and witchcraft, the man who is likely to become the next Senator from the state has quietly gone about his business. I had the opportunity to talk with Coons about the race, the O’Donnell madness, and his specific positions on issues he could face shortly in the Senate.

We’re living in a Second Gilded Age, and it has not yet produced enough champions willing to break up these massive conglomerates and hold them accountable for what they have caused throughout the nation and the world.

Unable to whip the votes against Audit the Fed in the Senate, the White House prevailed upon Bernie Sanders to limit the audit to only going back to 2007, and Bernie complied.  What does that mean?  Scarecrow: The key is not when they audit, it’s what the get to audit. They’ve excluded the workings of [...]

In a fiery speech on the Senate floor, Russ Feingold conditioned his support for the Wall Street reform measure on adding a multitude of amendments that would break up the mega-banks, cap size and leverage and restore the firewall between commercial and investment banks. He even went so far as to say that he would not vote to end debate on the bill unless these and other serious banking reforms were part of it.

Sen. Al Franken has quietly come up with an amendment that would change the way the rating agencies and their issuers do business. His amendment, co-sponsored by Bill Nelson and Chuck Schumer, would set up an office inside the SEC that would assign initial rating requests to the accredited rating agencies, rather than have the issuer hire the raters.